


Living in Your Atmosphere

by TheSpaceCoyote



Category: Borderlands (Video Games)
Genre: AI Jack, Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst with a Happy Ending, Canon Compliant through the end of Ep. 4, M/M, Major Illness, Mating Cycles/In Heat, Sharing a Body, Sickfic, Suicide Attempt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-07
Updated: 2017-12-09
Packaged: 2019-02-11 21:04:49
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 15
Words: 33,690
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12943875
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheSpaceCoyote/pseuds/TheSpaceCoyote
Summary: Handsome Jack is back. Thanks to the help of Rhys, an ambitious and loyal young omega, he has once again risen back to the top of Hyperion. Well—at the very least, his A.I. has, because clone bodies are hard to come by when vault hunters have tried pretty hard to destroy any and all copies of Jack's DNA. And while Jack is fairly content to hang around in his meat-suit’s body until his team of scientists figures it out, things get more complicated when Rhys collapses out of the blue at the gala where Jack had planned to finally present himself to both top-tier Hyperion employees and several rival CEOs.Now, the scientists on Jack’s payroll have to both generate the man a new body and figure out exactly what’s going on with Rhys—and whether the presence of Jack in Rhys’ brain has anything to do with it. Tensions soon flare between the omega and the A.I. as they struggle dealing with not only Rhys' worsening illness, but also his oncoming heat, warring egos, and the trials of reestablishing Hyperion’s power and influence in the arms industry. Before long Jack finds himself forced to confront feelings about Rhys that he has been suppressing this entire time—before it’s too late.





	1. Out of the Fire

**Author's Note:**

> So I'll preface this by saying longer fanfiction is a huge challenge for me. I'm a lot stronger when it comes to shorter moments, strung together with a common ship or universe or theme. I decided to participate in this event to challenge myself, and making this was definitely a challenge. I've gone back and forth from enjoying it to absolutely hating it, but ultimately I just have to take away the fact that I pushed my boundaries and tried something out of my comfort zone. Whether it succeeded or not, well....I think I'm too critical of my own work to say it at this point, so that is up to you guys. Let me know what you think of this piece.
> 
> Special thanks to my artists maxkiki, emmmwinch, and sky-blue-siha for making art, and pumpkinpillars for beta-ing.

Jack doesn’t remember his creation.

There’s no way he would have. He only knows about it via the memories from his previous life, from sending the Vault Hunters in his employ to supervise Nakayaka and his crazy schemes. It’s strange, to have a displaced knowledge of your own creation, and it’s something he tries not to dwell too much on. Instead, he’d focused on the future—on making sure his little meatbag didn’t give into his natural instincts to trip and fall into a lava pit or something.

He thought he’d done a pretty good job. Sure, there had been a couple of bandits and misguided do-gooders standing in the straight shot from the ancient little Atlas compound where he’d made first contact with Rhys up to his throne in the sky. It’d taken a little longer than Jack had maybe hoped, sure, but as usual, _everything_ worked out for the King of Hyperion in the end, and before long he—well, Rhys, but _him_ , still—had been sitting back in his chair with the entire galaxy at his fingertips.

In that moment, he’d felt like a new man. Invincible. Indomitable. Few other men could claim to have come back from the frikkin’ dead, ready to continue their life’s plan right where it had left off.

Jack doesn’t remember his creation. But he does remember his _birth_.


	2. On a Date

Dr. Nakajika had never been someone that Jack was particularly fond of. When he’d scoured Helios’ databases and found out the guy had been killed by Vault Hunters, well… while Jack _could_ relate to the annoyance of being shot by a pack of self-righteous bad guys, he wasn’t exactly shedding tears over the scientist’s death. But hanging onto his consciousness long enough for someone who wasn’t a taxidermied corpse to get their hands on it was at least _something_.

Jack’s clone body is still a frustrating work in progress. Much to his disappointment, Jack gleaned from Helios’ databases that the majority of his DNA samples had been destroyed by the very same bandits that had dared to kill him the first time around.

 _Rude_.

It sucked that he had to _wait_ for R &D to try to reconstruct an accurate genetic map from partial, half-ruined records but he felt gleeful at the fact that the bandits had tried _so_ hard to strip any trace of Jack from the world, only for him to spit in their faces and _survive_.

The wait was obnoxious but it would make his triumphant, physical return all the sweeter.

In the meantime, however, he supposed Rhys’ head wasn’t all that bad.

“ _Stop it_ ,” Rhys hissed under his breath at Jack, trying to play off swatting his chest as smoothing the wrinkles out of his shirt. Jack rolls his eyes as Rhys returned to his boring-ass dinner date with the plainest, most wooden female alpha Jack had ever laid eyes on.

Jack could no longer scent people the way he used to, but he could read up on the aromatic data getting uploaded to Rhys’ brain, _and_ he could use Rhys’ fancy analytical tech to figure out everything else he needed to know about _anybody_ , including the omega’s date.

 _Name:_ _Samantha Leigh Jordan_

_Occupation: Design Lead, Dep. of Propaganda_

_Endotype: Alpha (duh)_

_ECHOmeet Dating Profiles: 4_

_Body Type: Built like a frikkin’ tank but hidden under that shapeless dress. Bummer._

Jack liked his ladies buff. But he wanted them to flaunt it too, show off just how hard they could pummel bandits into the dust. That really got him going.

He noticed she kept looking around, like a lab specimen suddenly plopped into a brand new enclosure. Considering how generic her profile was, she probably had never been to such a fancy joint but, then again, Rhys probably hadn’t either.

Jack continued watching the awkward flirting between the two humans with detached amusement. Man, the kid was incredible. One of the first things that he’d done after they’d tenuously re-established their power was try to use his status to pick up chicks.

“So,” the female alpha interjected, eyes suddenly interested, “is Handsome Jack...you know. Is he here with you?”

Jack rolled his eyes. What was this, a seance?

“Oh, um, yeah, actually, he totally is,” Rhys gestured vaguely in Jack’s direction with his fork. Jack snapped his teeth at the bite of food on the utensil, frowning at the predictable lack of taste. Rhys shot him an annoyed, sidelong glance as he continued to smile awkwardly at his date.

“Wow. That. Is. _Awesome_.” The alpha practically gushed, so much so that Jack wasn’t entirely sure she hadn’t come in her pants. It was nice that even the mere suggestion of his presence could still do that to people. But even if she _did_ want him, it wasn’t like he could get laid anyway.

Oh well. Letting Rhys milk his legacy for all it was worth wasn’t _that_ annoying. Honestly, it just made Jack all the more eager to get back into his body so he could screw hotties again. And maybe have a plate of the fancy cake that this place was known for and that Rhys was definitely going to spoil himself and his date with.

Right on cue, Rhys stopped the waiter clearing their plates, ordering two huge slices of fudge cake. Jack grumbled, deciding to take a walk around the rest of the restaurant. Maybe get some juicy gossip or overhear some personal drama. Other people’s problems were always pretty funny, especially when they thought nobody else was listening in.

By the time Rhys’ date had ended, Jack had ended up in the kitchen, pretending to spit in some of the fancier dishes. He floated back through the walls out into the main dining hall, taking a moment to stand in some guy’s table with his crotch floating level with the plate he was digging into. He snickered, waving off the look Rhys was giving him from the entrance. He finally drifted to the omega’s side after he gave his date a firm hug and a smile.

“Amazing,” Jack snickered, watching Rhys’ date go, “you’re getting to that point where you can afford to be _choosy_ , kiddo.”

Rhys snorted.

“Listen, it’s _different_ when you’re an omega. Most of us are already a little more selective, we’re not just ready to plunge our knot into everything we see.”

“I mean, if you _can_ , then why not?”

“Could, Jack. Could.”

“Watch it,” the hologram growled, following Rhys through the foyer towards the gilded elevator, “my guys are gonna give my new body the _biggest_ , baddest alpha cock around and the moment I slid on in there I’m gonna fuck someone so hard I eject ‘em into space.”

“Well, that would be your M.O.” So Rhys was just gonna keep on being snarky, huh. All right.  

“She was pretty hot, though. And she seemed really into you. Or at least into the idea that you have _me_ shacking up in your brain.” Jack nearly walked through Rhys as the young man halted suddenly in front of the elevator, punching the UP button.

“Yeah, I know, she was pretty and kind of cool, too. She works in Propaganda. It’s kind of interesting to hear about how they’re wanting to….spin this.”

“Yeah? She want you to do a photoshoot?”

“I mean,” Rhys rubbed the back of his head as the elevator dinged, his dress shoes clacking against the steely floor of the small gilded box as he entered, “the idea was _hinted_ at, sure, but I really don’t think we should do anything official until you have your….”

Rhys snickered.

“Your debutante ball.”

“Quit calling it that, sweetheart, I’m _Handsome Jack_ , not some doe-eyed teenaged girl,” the hologram snorted, crossing his arm behind his head and leaning up against the wall of the elevator. He watched the numbers on the digital display above the door steadily tick up and up and up, first by integers, then by tens. He rapped his fingers against his forearm, wishing for some kind of lightspeed travel between the parts of Helios that Rhys could ride in. Sure, if Jack plugged himself into Helios’ subsystems he could appear in his penthouse in half a second, and while it would be funny to beat Rhys by such a long shot, it would probably get boring waiting around for his meatbag to show up.

Maybe he’d propose it in the next budget. After he’d officially revealed himself in tomorrow evening’s party.

It was certainly awesome to occupy the sheer terrific power of Helios but even someone as indomitable as Jack got his code stretched a little thin by it. Besides, Rhys’ head had become...well, not _cozy_ , but. Lived in. By him. Jack had grown used to the intimate little corners of Rhys’ mind.

And the kid still needed a little bit more of Jack’s particular flavor of “mentorship” if he was gonna be co-CEO anyway.

They were already on their way. Out of the goodness of Jack’s heart, he’d permitted the kid to enjoy the fantastic luxury of his penthouse, especially after he’d seen the cramped little apartment Rhys shared with his uncomfortably-muscled friend. It wasn’t _that_ bad, it certainly was much much better than the cruddy little shacks they’d witnessed on Pandora—and he had certainly been impressed by the amount of Handsome Jack merch Rhys had tried valiantly to hide—but the A.I. had a taste for luxury and showing off his money and power, so of course he was going to hole his favorite little meatsack up in his long-deserted place.  

The elevator finally _dinged_ , breaking Jack’s train of thought. Rhys walked ahead without him, though Jack was quick to flicker and appear right in front of him.

“It’s lonely in here, kiddo, too bad you didn’t decide to take up that alpha’s offer of a good pounding.” Rhys pushed lightly in Jack’s direction, hand passing right through the man’s chest.

“It’s hardly lonely with you around.” Rhys smirked, fingers quickly unclipping his tie as he strode in the direction of the bedroom. Jack followed after him, taking a seat atop one of the bedposts, eyes glazing over as Rhys started to undress.

This….this was still something he was kind of getting used to. Rhys and his little friends had been so caught up in the drama and danger of Pandora that mundane things like changing clothes or basic grooming were pretty far from their mind (a thought that made Jack unusually grateful for his current inability to smell anything) but now that his meatbag had finally settled in some semblance of _routine_ Jack was seeing all this weird domestic shit with no bandit fights or rakk attacks or shady deals to distract from just…..watching.

He did so much _watching_ now and it was starting to make him antsy.

Rhys primly hung his suit-jacket up in the closet, toeing his boots off into the shoe rack and folding his tie up in the drawer. The dress shirt and pants were piled into the laundry basket Rhys had bought—just one of the many weird little touches that pulled at Jack’s memory.

Rhys said nothing as he got into his pajamas, pulling the blue and yellow silk over his tattooed skin, fiddling to get to the sleeve over the clunky shape of his cybernetic. Jack had noticed this. Rhys tended to get a little quiet, like he was lost in his thoughts, once he got someplace where he could be alone. Mostly.

He waited until Rhys got into bed, the young man giving a tired nod in Jack’s direction before laying flat on his back, fluttering eyelids looking up at the ceiling. The A.I. started to drift aimlessly from his perch on the bedpost, closer to the resting man.

“Soooo. How you doing?”

Rhys snorted, turning over to fix his stare at the wall. Jack frowned, continuing to float in the air a couple inches off of the bed. He waited for Rhys to respond, to say something, but the young man seemed content to give him the cold shoulder. Or maybe he had fallen asleep.

Jack crossed his arms, refusing to be the first one to clear the silence. If Rhys wanted to ignore him or fall asleep—which was another way of _ignoring_ him—then it was his business. He glared at the same spot at the wall that he assumed Rhys was looking at, watching the glow of Elpis turn the cream of the wall into a faint, bruised glow.

“How…how do you think I’m doing?” Rhys jolted Jack out of his reverie. The A.I. uncrossed his arms and drifted slightly closer until he was practically hovering above Rhys, waiting. A sigh came from the young man and he rolled over on his back, flinching only slightly when he ended up nearly nose to nose with the watchful A.I.

“You haven’t been sleeping that well lately _soo_ ….I’m gonna guess pretty crappy,” Jack hummed, earning himself an annoyed look.

“You…you think this is easy for me? I mean I’m…I’m the CEO…”

“Co-CEO, sweetheart.”

“Whatever, Jack, the _point_ is is that it’s a lot of pressure and stress even without dealing with…with all the extra drama...” Rhys’ voice trailed off in a stifled whine. He swallowed roughly over the lump in his throat, eyebrows furrowing as he glared up at Jack.

“Well, it’s not an easy job, I mean did you really think running Hyperion would be a piece of cake? If you don’t think you’re cut out for it, princess, then I can find someone else’s brain to shack up in.”

“Yeah, okay,” Rhys rolled his eyes with a huff, flopping his head back against his pillow as he turned over onto his back, “because that’s something that’s totally possible right now.”

“It’s not like I’d rather be stuck inside anyone else... _heh_ …” Jack raised his eyebrow suggestively. When he only got a deadpan glare he kept going.

“I’ve gotten used to it in here, anyway. Know my way around the place. It’d be like moving outta my penthouse into a bandit shack on Pandora. Besides, I’m pretty sure you’re the only one who’s got fancy enough tech to keep me in perfect shape.”

“I mean, not a lot of people are crazy enough to get this stuff done uh….back when I got them, the mortality rate was like twenty percent…” Rhys smiled nervously at the memory. Now that would be something interesting that Jack could comb through later, once he was done being awesome and calming his meatbag’s fears.

“See? You’re already a little bit of a badass, even if you’ve got a long way before you catch up with me,” Jack patted his hand through Rhys’ side, “all you gotta do it make your little speech, then I’ll show up and take care of the rest, okay? Really make all the lil’ peons _ooh_ and _ahh_. And if we’re lucky, make some of the other CEOs shit their fancy pants.”

“ _Mmmm_ don’t remind me about those guys. I’m already worried enough about some of the more...scary-ambitious executives. The head of Manufacturing looked _really_ unhappy when he heard you were back….like....I was pretty sure I was gonna glare-holes in my head…”

“Asshole. He’s just got a chip on his shoulder about omegas. And me.” Jack shook his head with a snicker. “He wore this….this _terrible_ tie once. Kind of maybe burned his throat up when I decided to light it on fire while he was still wearing it.”

“You couldn’t have just like, _not_ burned all your bridges and making things harder for me?” Rhys whined. “You really don’t know how intimidating it is for an omega to stand in front of all those alphas.”

“ _Pshhh_ , shut up. It’s gonna be fine, ‘kay kitten? This’ll be like...super easy. You’re probably worrying about those guys way too much,” Jack dismissed.

“Yeah, _okay_ , because those guys aren’t the very same people who were gonna liquefy my brains and suck you out through a straw. They were totally going to do that until you stepped in,” Rhys worried his lip, arms wrapped tightly about his body. Jack frowned.

“Well... _hey_ , I’m gonna be there tomorrow with you. And I ain’t just gonna fly off and screw around and leave you to all those creepy CEOs and corporate crotch-sniffers. Don’t you worry—” Jack’s bright blue finger brushed up against Rhys’ nose, making him wrinkle it, “—I’ll make sure they don’t tear you limb from limb, sweetheart.”

“Got myself a creepy guardian angel, huh,” Rhys sighed, though he smiled up at Jack, “that actually makes me feel a little bit better. Weird.”

“It’s cause _everyone_ feels better when they got their hero in their corner. Trust me, sweetheart. I’ve got you.”

Rhys chuckled as he reached for the extra pillow from the headboard, hugging it close to his chest as he looked up at the hologram hovering above him.

“Think you can get some rest now?”

Rhys hummed and nodded.

“Great. Lemme know if you can’t and I’ll try to screw around your cranium and see if I can mess with your nerves.”

“Mmm...sounds weird…” Rhys murmured into his pillow as he rolled onto his side, hugging it close to his chest as his eyelids finally fluttered shut. Jack smirked as his form started to flicker, eventually disappearing as Rhys finally fell into proper sleep.


	3. In the Spotlight, Tonight

The gala was in the early evening thankfully, so it was fine that Rhys slept in a little longer than usual. Honestly, Jack was usually able to detect things long before Rhys had fully transitioned into wakefulness and even _he_ hadn’t heard the kid’s palm alarm go off before Rhys was sleepily fumbling with the bright, beeping display. Jack groaned, flickering into existence on the rumpled bed beside Rhys as the young man wriggled in the sheets, struggling to sit up against the sleep still clouding his eyes.

Rhys spent a couple more minutes shifting about in bed, hugging one of the rumpled pillows tightly to his chest. Jack was getting a little antsy, eyes occasionally floating over to the fancy, holographic clock on the nightstand. There was still plenty of time before the gala started, so he didn’t want to rush the kid, but he also didn’t want Rhys falling back asleep, considering how apparently deeply the both of them had been resting. If they slept through this presentation, there was no way to tell exactly what the board members would try to do. Despite how sycophantic he remembered them being, Jack also wouldn’t put it past any of them to try to make a grab for the position of CEO like the starving dogs that they were if they detected any kind of weakness. And then there was the matter of the rival company CEOs in attendance. Coming to see for themselves if the rumors about Jack’s return were true, and if not, whether Hyperion’s assets were ripe for the plundering.

Vultures. Joke was on them, though. After being away from his throne for so long, Jack wasn’t about to let _anyone_ snatch it out from underneath him for any reason.

So yeah. Rhys getting up and getting properly ready, both physically and mentally, for the task ahead of him was kind of important.

Jack sidled up against Rhys as the young man curled on his side, taking deep, soothing breaths into his pillow. He frowned as he noticed Rhys’ eyes starting to flutter shut again, a telltale sign that he was trying to fall back asleep. Jack could feel his own form flickering as Rhys spaced out, but before the young man could fully fall asleep Jack leaned in and phased his projected face right through Rhys’ physical one.

The young omega jolted, eyes snapping open sharply as he nearly rolled off the bed in surprise. He blinked furiously, squinting at Jack’s smug face before his lips broke out into a sleepy pout.

“Jerk….”

“You were gonna fall back asleep, kiddo. You’ve already snoozed through your alarm.”

“Weren’t you the one telling me I needed to get more sleep?” Rhys screwed his eyes up as he yawned, rubbing at his cheek with his flesh hand. Jack stood up on his knees on the bed, hands on his hips as he watched Rhys slowly crawl out from the tangled sheets, rising shakily to his feet.

“Yeah, but you can’t just go and sleep through the whole gala either, pumpkin. Besides, considering how freaked out you were last night about this whole thing, figured you might need a couple hours to...get ready,” Jack commented as he flickered away from the bed, meeting Rhys as the young omega stumbled over to the closet. Rhys had gradually started moving part of his things from the apartment he shared with his bearded friend up to the penthouse. Jack felt more at ease being inside of his old abode, and Rhys had readily agreed to spend most nights sleeping here if only to escape the antsy annoyance that Jack turned into when he didn’t get his way. But the A.I. knew the young man appreciated having the space, considering how he’d practically moved his entire shoe and sock collection into the fancy, walk-in closet.

It was….weirdly fascinating to watch Rhys’ morning routine, sometimes, to the point where Jack felt like one of the obsessed weirdos with their noses practically pressed to the stalker biome. Rhys tended to follow a fairly predictable path, from bed to closet to bathroom to shower to kitchen and so on. He liked to lay his clothes out on the comforters before washing and insisted on tidying the bed by hand instead of utilizing the self-making technology that would do this kind of mundane stuff automatically. He got annoyed when Jack popped in while he was peeing but didn’t seem to care if Jack hung around while he was showering, as long as Jack didn’t try to phase into the crystalline stall. He used the formerly-dusty little French press instead of Jack’s fancy coffee maker, but made waffles in Jack’s specialized iron so much the A.I. was convinced it might break.

“What do you think?” Rhys turned away from the closet, holding up two outfits. Jack raised his eyebrow.

“Kiddo, I’m not your _mom_ ,” Jack sighed, eyes flitting between the suits.

“....Left. It’s uh.” Jack flapped his hand towards garment in question. “It’s Hyperion colors but it’s got a lil’ touch of blue that matches your eyes.”

“Wow. You _sure_ you’re not my mom?” Rhys teased, hooking the right outfit back into the closet as he set the chosen one out of the bed.

“Easy on the sarcasm, kiddo, that’s my job,” Jack shooed Rhys away, practically chasing the omega towards the bathroom though Rhys was all smirks and laughter as he disappeared behind the door. Popping up from under him in the shower was sure to pop that cheeky smile off his face but considering the big day ahead of them both, Jack didn’t want to risk Rhys slipping from fright and cracking his head open.

Jack floated about, idly re-checked some of the messages in Rhys’ inbox related to the gala. A couple of last-minute RSVPs had fluttered in, Jack barely reading the names as he approved them. More the merrier for his triumphant, _official_ return, right?

A soft, warbling little tune sounded from behind the muffling doors of the bathroom. Jack snorted, rolling his eyes. Another little note on Rhysie’s routine—kid _loved_ to sing in the shower. Jack knew the tune, it was one of those sentimental Aquatorian ballads that waxed all pretty about the ins and outs of alpha-omega love. Rhys was a sucker for that mushy stuff even if he hissed and denied it whenever Jack called him out.

Jack closed the window to Rhys’ inbox and walked over to the bathroom door. He could see the steam from the shower drifting around the illuminated crack at the bottom. The kid liked his water _hot_ and came out pink as a spanking afterwards.

Jack thought it was funny to interrupt Rhys when he started singing. The omega should have known by now that Jack loved hearing his voice crack and squeak when the alpha’s baritone cut through his whispery tune and yet he still kept singing his embarrassing schmaltzy ballad.

Jack kept his need to ruin things at bay, however, hovering near the doorway as he listened to Rhys sing and watched the warm mist condense against the bedroom’s hardwood floors. He reached out, blue fingers passing harmlessly through the steam trickling out from beneath the bathroom door.

He scowled, peering at his fingers.

The door opened unexpectedly, swinging through his body and bathing the bedroom in yellow light. Rhys gave a bemused chuckle as Jack jumped to his feet, image glitching in surprise.

“What were you doing? Trying to spy on me?”

“As _if_ ,” Jack snorted, crossing his arms, “I was just….you know what, never mind.”

“ _Okay_.” Rhys snickered, running his hand through the wet strands of hair sticking to his temples and forehead. Little droplets cascaded off of his hair despite his best efforts to dry off, dripping down his tattooed chest. The blue waistband of his boxers cut slightly into his hips, a sweet little omega muffin top poking out over the edge.

Jack pulled his eyes away before Rhys could accuse him of staring. He even floated wordlessly back away from the bathroom and towards the bedroom’s large window, counting the satellites and transports that fluttered by. He did end up watching Rhys secretly through the window’s reflection as the omega fluffed his hair up with mousse and pulled on his perfectly pressed outfit.

Jack had been right, the little touches of blue really did bring out the kid’s eyes.  

* * *

The ballroom was completely enrobed in gold and white. Huge Hyperion banners splashed with Jack’s face hung from every wall, a particularly large one tumbling in front of the curtains backing the main stage. The guests were milling about, all clad in crisp formal wear as they rubbed elbows and partook of the refreshments flitting about atop the trays of the robotic waiters.

Jack peered through the crowds as Rhys hid backstage, waiting for the cue for his announcement. The kid had hardly grabbed a bite to eat or a drink to steady his nerves, spending his time mostly pacing and wringing his hands as Jack scoured the guests to see who exactly had come to witness his triumphant, _official_ return.

Most of them were standard Hyperion employees, middle tier and up, with sprinklings of supervisors and department heads whose faces he vaguely knew. Several of the board members were in attendance as well, including Mr. Blake, though they had all witnessed Rhys summon Jack in his palm to convince them _not_ to liquify the kid’s brains and jettison his corpse into space. Jack supposed they were just here to watch the show, to see whether everyone was pulled off according to plans. Pfft. As if any plan of Jack’s wouldn’t be executed _perfectly_.

He parsed through the crowd, information windows popping up as he sucked intel from Rhys’ systems. Most of it was boring, or crap he already knew, but it made it easier for him to zero in on the CEOs that had decided to accept the invite to his party. Mr. Torgue he could find without aid from any databases as he shouted compliments to a flustered looking Hyperion programmer in a dress that plunged down her back. Montgomery Jakobs was standing near the bar, sipping something from a leather-bound flask that looked like it’d been buried in dirt for a hundred years. Jack scrunched his eyes, sweeping through a crowd until a window popped up identifying Comrade Alyona Vladof—though it took a couple of seconds to find her, considering the thick coat and heavy grey hat nearly caused her to blend in amongst the rest of the guests. She popped appetizers into her mouth with steely precision. Jack could practically hear the poor cocktail wieners crunch and pop.

“Jeez….wouldn’t wanna be hitched to _that_...well, maybe if you’re a masochist…” Jack fluttered away from the concealing curtains, hands on his hips as he watched Rhys. The kid was nibbling the nails on his flesh hand, cybernetic palm flattening down the line of his suit. Even without being able to smell the omega he could practically feel the anxiety rolling off of him.

“You still nervous? C’mon, kiddo, it’s not _that_ bad. If you’re worried about screwing up your speech, I mean, your eye basically works as it’s own teleprompter. Easy peasy.”

Rhys took a series of deep breaths, holding out his hands as if he were bracing himself.

“Okay. Okay. I’m cool, I’m cool,” he huffed, swallowing harshly.

“Are you?” Jack was skeptical. Rhys was pale and sweaty, looking like he was about to pass out any second from nerves. But then the kid glared at him and _there_ was that fire Jack liked to see.

“Yes. I am. C’mon, let’s do this!” Rhys hopped up and down, trying to psych himself up. Jack snickered at the kid’s weird little dance, but the show of energy encouraged him. He winked, raising his hand up in front of Rhys’ face.

“Up top, kiddo, c’mon, give it to me.”

Rhys met his hand in a _perfect_ high-five that made Jack’s code sizzle with excitement.

* * *

Maybe Jack had laid it on a little thick when he’d complimented Rhys during their time on Pandora. Jack had never been one to kick back and ride side-car, so he’d been pretty active in nurturing both Rhys’ ambition and his drooling fanboy side, figuring both played nicely into his soon-to-be-flesh hands.

But. Dang it. Seeing Rhys’ standing, smartly dressed and confident before employees, board members, and rival CEOs alike, re-affirming Hyperion’s position as the number one manufacturer—it made him so frikkin’ _proud_.

And it wasn’t even time for his grand entrance yet.

Jack stood right next to Rhys on the stage, getting a kick out of the fact that he was standing _right_ there in front of these fancy-dressed, slack-jawed goons and they had _no idea_ . They had nothing more than rumors to go on at this point and even then they were probably clueless about the fact that Jack could stand right in front of their stupid little faces without being seen. Not that that would last much longer. Rhys’ speech was steadily winding towards the climax—to Jack’s big entrance. His triumphant, _official_ return to Hyperion. If he was physical he would practically be salivating. As it was, his code was dancing in delight, form wiggling giddily in place.

“—but even as I speak to you tonight, I know I cannot do justice to the name of Hyperion the way our _true_ leader can. A man who has defied death to be with you all tonight. Ladies and Gentlemen—” Rhys throws out his hand, the lights dimming as he dramatically raises the sleek, gold drive linked up to the room’s systems.

Jack puts his hands on his hips and tilts up his chin, preemptively striking a pose.

“I present to you now—the hero of Pandora, the most feared man in six galaxies— _Handsome Jack_!”

The ballroom practically explodes in bright gold and obsidian confetti as Rhys slides the drive into his port, immediately projecting the hologram up behind him. Jack smiles as his form instantly scaled up threefold, towering over the stage and bathing the sleek wooden floors in an eerie blue glow. He laughs at the gasps, cheers, and yes even a couple of screams that echo through the ballroom at his flashy entrance. His laughter crackles through the speakers, booming through the ears of every guest, sending manicured hair aflutter and making sweat break out beneath thick layers of makeup.

“What’s up, kiddos, miss me?” Jack’s voice boomed, swelling through the entire room, undeniable and suffocating. Shudders of fear and awe rippled visibly from the crowd, some even pushing others out the way to try to get to the exits Jack had already remotely locked. Comrade Vladof got elbowed in the ribs, splashing vodka on her coat.

Jack chuckled at the sight caused by his mere _presence_ , the huge flickering form of his digitally generated body. Heh. Just wait ‘til they got a load of his sick clone body.

“You’ll find escape to be impossible,” Jack warbles, sing-song, as he watches people still trying to yank open the doors, helpless fear in their eyes as they looked over his shoulder back at him. Still others were gathering closer around the perimeters of the stage, drawn to him like flecks of iron to a magnet, like he was some massive idol burning bright in the middle of a crazy pagan ritual.

God, he missed this.

“Now now, kiddos, there’s nothing to be afraid of now that Daddy’s back. In fact, he’s here to make everything _aaaaaall_ better for Hyperion and its employees…” Jack’s eyes flashed with cruel intent.

“Unless, of course….you’ve been using my absence to outsource secrets to other manufacturers….to anti-Hyperion, anti- _me_ interests. If that’s the case, then well, you should be _frikkin’ terrified_.”

It had been easy, with Rhys’ code-monkey skills and his own omnipotence, to figure out who exactly had been up to no good in the time Jack had been gone.

Turrets suddenly dropped from the ceiling, whirling around and rattling with the deft movements of Jack’s hands. The screams and cries of the guests as red sights rained down on some of them was music to his ears, and he was about ready to command them to fire upon the unfortunate, traitorous targets when a garbled scent reading flashed and caught his attention, moments before jerky movement from below drew his eye.

His hands stilled, eyebrows dipping in confusion as he watched Rhys sway, knocking into the podium as he scrambled for purchase. The young man’s mouth was open, gasping like a fish as he curled over in pain.

At first, Jack thought Rhys had been shot. He wouldn’t put it past some of the guys who were here to try to take out his meatbag. But there’s no blood on Rhys’ body as he collapses on the floor and any relief Jack might be feeling was squashed when he noticed the young man trembling sporadically and—and— _crap_ —

Jack could see his own holographic form fluttering, glitching as erratically as the muscles in Rhys’ body. His eyes widened, the creeping feeling of his own instability gutting into him. He clawed out at the air, fingers fading away as Jack fell towards Rhys, his consciousness snuffing out before he even reached him.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Artwork by http://emmmwinch.tumblr.com and http://maxkiki.tumblr.com.


	4. After the Gala

Jack jolted back from the void with a start, his form condensing into being as quickly as a chemical reaction. The sudden flash from flat nothing to bright, brilliant white was jarring, even for a pseudo-physical program. He grunted as the world swum back into view, hazy and shaking but undeniably there.

And there….there was Rhys, lying still on a hospital bed, as white as the sheets beneath him.

Jack forgot himself for a moment, his forearms phasing frenetically through Rhys’ bed as he instinctively fought to get to him. Rhys barely moved and Jack did little more than make the monitors attached to Rhys’ fizzle slightly at the interference so Jack stopped with a frustrated growl and took a step back. Thankfully, Rhys took that second to start to properly come to, his eyelids fluttering open, increased consciousness contributing a little more stability and solidity to Jack’s form. The hologram crossed his arms tightly over his chest, trying to look as unconcerned as possible as Rhys tilted his head to look at him, eyes flickering open wider.

Jack did little more than raise his eyebrows as he looked down at the man on the bed. Rhys groaned, fingers coming up to touch the strings of drool that had dribbled from his lips.

“Ugh.....I feel like shit.”

“You look it, too,” Jack snarked. Rhys mustered an annoyed glare at him, his lips working up a comeback when a knock suddenly rung against the door.

“Come in!” Jack shouted, forgetting no one but Rhys could hear him. The kid flinched, hissing at the sudden noise. He glowered at Jack, wetting his lips as he mustered up a response, as loud as he could muster.

“C-Come in…” he rasped.

Jack was both annoyed and grateful to see a woman in a stiff, white doctor’s coat enter through the steel doors. She was holding a bright yellow Hyperion tablet, the 3D projections from the screen reflecting back against her glasses.

“Well, you’re awake, that’s encouraging,” she spoke evenly, brushing over to glance at Rhys’ pale face. Jack hunched over his meatbag’s bed, hands on his hips as he leaned in close to the doctor as she checked over Rhys’ body.

“It seems like your vital signs have stabilized, we’ll have to check in on—” The doctor shivered, eyes lifting to look in the direction of Jack, the hologram practically laying over Rhys’ body with how far he was leaning.

“Is…” she wet her lips, “is Handsome Jack….here?”

“Oh,” Rhys croaked, waving his hand at the hologram, “yeah um. He’s here. Do you need to…”

“Ah. Yes. If there is a way I can speak with him…”

“Sure. Sure. Just um. Gimme...one sec…” Rhys droned, tilting his head to look pointedly at Jack. The hologram let out an annoyed growl.

There was a trick they’d used before, first in the initial meeting to show that Rhys wasn’t bullshitting about Jack in order to save the kid’s brain from being turned to milkshake. It worked then and it would surely work now but….damn it, it was _super_ degrading.

But at least this way he could properly kick these medical bozos into gear so they’d treat Rhys and get them both outta here as quick as possible.

Jack’s form fizzled, deconstructed code floating in a stream down before vanishing completely. Rhys’ body twitched, brows furrowing slightly. The doctor took a step back, frowning down at Rhys as the young man’s arm suddenly shook, flipping over. His fingers uncurled as if they were being forced open, the light in the middle of his palm suddenly illuminating.

Jack grunted as his form squeezed out into the tiny projection, flickering for a couple seconds before stabilizing. He placed his hands on his hips, tapping his foot as he glared up at the stunned doctor.

“Yeah yeah yeah, it’s temporary digs here, sweetheart. I know I’m pretty to look at but maybe quit gawking and starting telling us what’s wrong with this lil’ omega here?”

The doctor spluttered for a moment before regaining her composure.

“O-Of course, Handsome Jack, sir, l-let me just reviews the notes from the nurses…give him a rudimentary check-up...” The doctor kept looking back at Jack hovering in the palm of Rhys’ hand as she pulled up a chair next to the omega’s bed, checking the port in his temple as well as examining the young man’s eyes.

“So….this is all just….standard cybernetic checkup stuff, right? Probably just something knocked around in there. Some oil leaking or something?” Jack piped up when the doctor pushed her chair away from the bed, checking Rhys’ history on her tablet. The young man frowned down at the projection in his palm, eyelids still fluttering instinctively from the exam.

“What? No. No. That’s not even….Jack don’t you know anything about cybernetics?”

“Sure I do, pumpkin, but like _theoretically_. Back in my day we had like, the mechanical junk down pat, but the whole grafting onto complex organic systems was still a bit of a... _ehhhh_ ….hack job.”

“I try not to think of how many people probably got lobotomized before they got it right,” Rhys mumbled, frowning at the pulsing and beeping machines all around him, “I’m….maybe it’s just been awhile, but some of these machines….don’t think I’ve seen ‘em before.”

“Probably just got an upgrade. We should probably grab you one too, pumpkin. Unless that whole ordeal was just ‘cause of your wiener nerves,” Jack snorted to defuse his worry as the doctor returned to the side of Rhys’ bed.

“It’s possible exhaustion contributed to your host’s issues, sir...Has he been getting enough sleep with…” The doctor trailed off, looking pointedly away from Jack. The CEO crossed his arms with a growl.

“With _what_.”

“With...with all the stress that he has been through lately, sir. According to his records he was a middle manager. Certainly such a meteoric rise to the top may have caused him a little bit of a….a head rush, let’s say,” the doctor recovered smartly. She peered back at Rhys’ limp form.

“Or it could be something with his omega physiology causing issues with the cybernetic interface.”

Rhys eyes narrowed.

“What….is that supposed to mean?”

“Well, when you had your cybernetics installed, the Hyperion program was still in an infant stage. I’m sure you were briefed on the high mortality and disability rate during your initial consultation for the implants. Though you survived and tested positively in all of your checkups since, the technology has improved steadily since, with fine-tuning designed to mesh more efficiently with all three endotypes.”

Rhys bit his lip, annoyance still fluttering in his eyes. Jack noticed it whenever someone unduly brought up his omega-nature.

“Of course, that’s just a theory—one that would prove fairly difficult to directly test, so let’s look into some other factors first. Can you give me any information as to what was going on prior to your collapse?”

“Hmmph. Sure,” Rhys started, still clearly a bit peeved at the doctor’s statement, “I was….well, I was giving a speech...big, _important_ speech, y’know, having Jack in my brain makes me a real important guy now.” Jack could only smirk at the petulance preening in Rhys’ voice.

“Then I….I hooked up into Helios’ system so Jack could project himself for everyone and I...I dunno…” Rhys continued, licking his lips, “I started to feel really lightheaded, sick to my stomach...my legs were shaky and then I couldn’t hold myself up anymore….and then just...nothing…”

“Have you noticed anything similar happening before?”

Rhys furrowed his eyebrows together, his lower lip sticking out in concern.

“Now that you mention it. Uh,” Rhys absently rubbed the side of his head, “the time I uploaded Jack to Helios I kind of, uh...almost passed out.”

Jack stared at him as the doctor nodded.

“I...what? I didn’t even notice!”

Rhys snorted.

“Of course not. I mean. You weren’t exactly in my head and that point and were probably occupied with _literally_ becoming a space station.”

“It takes a lot outta ya!” Jack defended.  

“All right,” the doctor gently interrupted, swiping over the tablet in her hand, “I’m going to arrange a couple of tests, blood and fluid draws, as well as a urine sample while we’re at it.”

She clicked the tablet closed.

“A nurse will be tend to you in just a moment to properly set up the EEG. Once all tests are finished I will touch base with you both again. Is there anything else you need from me, sir?” She asked crisply to the tiny hologram with the tiny scowl projected from Rhys’ hand. Jack wanted badly to continue being pissed off, but the doc wasn’t giving him anything other than trim professionalism.

“No. Get your guys in here so we can get out and back to business as soon as possible,” he snapped before taking a pointed seat in the middle of Rhys’ palm to wait.


	5. Regarding His Cooking Skills

It was a miracle the nurses could finish the testing considering the way Jack was glaring holes in their heads as they busied about Rhys, attaching shiny electrodes to his head or strapping sensors to his wrists or pulling out some big-ass yellow plastic needles to stick in his poor meatbag’s body.

There was something going on with Rhys—that much, the medical team had been able to tell Jack from the very cursory scan of the young omega’s central nervous system. They’d decided to cover their bases and ended up drawing both blood and cerebrospinal fluid, the latter of which had been _thoroughly_ upsetting both for Rhys and Jack. The A.I. didn’t exactly share Rhys’ pain and discomfort but hearing the little gasps and whines of pain coming from him as the stiff, thin needle sunk into his flesh and was wedged between his vertebra disquieted him enough that he took to pacing antsy about the room until the tech had wiped the waxy disinfectant off of Rhys’ skin and patched the spot up with a square of clean, white gauze.

Jack had only grunted when the doctor had said that they should have the results within a couple days, if not sooner. Rhys had hesitantly translated Jack’s clear discomfort into something a bit more amiable to the doctor before taking his folded clothes back from her with a thankful nod. Jack crossed his arms, tapping his fingers as he watched Rhys re-dressing with what he hoped was a look of general disinterest. Seriously, Rhys was so damn pale that the patch covering the lumbar puncture basically blended in. How long had they been out? And had he gotten skinnier too? There were definitely deeper shadows under his ribs and spine than he’d had before. Not that Jack paid much attention to how Rhys looked back when they had been on Pandora, or all the times he’d seen Rhys change since they’d finally returned to Helios.

Still, Rhys’ skinniness had dogged him as Rhys had quickly ambled back up from R&D and back to Jack’s penthouse. The young man seemed weirdly distant, ignoring all of Jack’s persistent attempts to get him to stop for Aquatorian sushi or a double rakk-burger or even a scoop from the ice cream shop he knew to be the kid’s favorite. Rhys just hummed and shrugged him off, giving him little more than noncommittal responses until he punched in the code for Jack’s penthouse and rode up in the gilded elevator. Jack was frustrated by his inability to see his own glowing blue reflection mirrored in the marble and gold leaf decorating the intimate little box.

“I’m...just not super hungry right now, okay Jack?” Rhys dismissed, waving his hand in front of Jack’s face. The A.I. scowled, pawing at Rhys’ hand.

“Don’t gimme that, Rhysie! I’m not gonna let you take that digestive system for granted! You don’t know what you got ‘til it’s gone,” Jack bitterly waved his hand through his middle as the elevator _ding-_ ed and ground to a halt at the only floor it ever stopped at.

* * *

There were many things that Jack was grateful for now that he was back at Helios.

The sweet office was definitely one of them. Being trapped in a senseless void for who knows how long, then traveling from rusty craphole to rusty craphole on the baked desert of Pandora had left him with a certain appreciation for the staggering view of Elpis and the pristine decor spanning the massive room that was his office. His chair was just as majestic as it had been when he’d last sat in it with a flesh body and though he still couldn’t feel its comfort and warmth, floating in its seat made him look forward to the day he finally could.

Another was seeing his face plastered everywhere again, pristine and unmarked, unlike the various vandalised billboards and posters he’d seen down on the planet below. Even more monuments to him had been set up every since Rhys had finally brought him back to his throne, and Jack was already planning on erecting even more in celebration of when he finally regained his flesh form. Maybe a fifty foot tall mural of his robust, nude form right smack dab in the middle of the Hub; that would be sweet.

There were plenty of other things Jack loved about being back on his space station but the one that crossed his mind strongest as he led Rhys out of the elevator was the banging kitchen setup in his old penthouse.

He remembered that it’d taken a day of cleaning from staff Rhys had hired to get his old digs back to tip-top shape but now that everything had been wiped free of dust and properly scraped and cleaned it looked exactly as it had beforehand. The sight of the pristine granite countertops and shiny steel appliances, affixed with state-of-the-art displays and controls made the A.I. prickle with pride as he swaggered over the slate tile, listening to the _clack_ of Rhys’ heeled boots against the stone.

“Now let’s see, what‘cha in the mood for, pumpkin? Feel free to paw around and see what I got. You gotta eat more than just delivery from that crappy burrito place in the Hub.”

“It’s not _that_ bad,” Rhys protested as he glanced about the kitchen. “Um, did you order any of those flash frozen dinners? Those are nice—”

Jack groaned loudly, rolling his eyes.

“ _Yeah_ , because I know how much of a lazy butt you are, c’mon kiddo let’s do something more _fun_ than just that. Back in the day when I had my body I would spend _hours_ in here. Got to the point where I could make enough sweets and cake to cater a fancy frickin’ wedding with enough left over to stuff a gift basket to the guys who airbrush my dick in those Hyperion centerfolds you had plastered all over your closet.”

Rhys hid his blush as he snorted, brushing his flesh hand over his nose.

“You think _I’m_ embarrassing but...c’mon...Handsome Jack….the _baker_ …”

“Watch it, sweetheart, we all have our vices.”

“Actually, this is probably the least of your vices…”

“So why’re you complaining? You get to use my awesome kitchen and all my _suuuper_ expensive and high quality ingredients to make something cool. And I’m here to supervise and give you tips and maybe if I think _real_ hard I might be able to taste the results,” he ended sarcastically, watching with his hands on his hips as Rhys crept about the kitchen like a nervous dear, peering around the sleek metal countertops and high-tech fridge, stove, and oven— among other smaller appliances that Jack could tell the young man could barely hazard a guess about.

Still, he rested up against the counter, arms folded, wanting to see what Rhys could do before he decided to intervene. He tilted his chin up contemptuously as he watched Rhys’ pull up what was clearly an amateur’s recipe site on his cybernetic palm display.

Jack managed to restrain himself when Rhys decided on a _chocolate souffle_ with a raspberry coulis of all things! While he admired the omega’s good taste and ambition, he had _serious_ doubts about whether the kid knew enough to pull this off—doubts that were strengthened when Rhys pulled out muffin tins instead of ramekins. And when he added too much flour to his roux, and when he beat the egg whites _way_ too much and ended up with something that looked more like cottage cheese—

It was when the raspberry sauce was looking more like charred caramel than anything else that Jack finally decided to intervene, lest Rhys burn the entire penthouse down only a few weeks after Jack had _finally_ been able to set foot in it again.

“Stop, stop stop stop, kiddo, jeez you’re frikkin’ embarrassing—turn the heat off, for the love of god,” Jack swore as he flitted to the young man’s side, glaring at him as Rhys scrambled to turn off the burners and dump the smoking pan into the sink where it sizzled and hissed. Jack winced at the sound, knowing this was gonna end up as a hell of a cleanup. The counters were already covered in splatters of chocolate batter and Rhys himself was dusted from the waist down in the flour he’d half spilled on himself earlier.

Rhys stood still, head hung in shame as he looked about the mess he’d made of Jack’s kitchen. Which, well—it wasn’t as pristine as it had been when they’d walked in, but Jack had definitely seen bigger disasters. This was more like a small dust devil of flour, egg whites, and chocolate had whirled through his kitchen and left an upset looking omega in its wake.

“I appreciate the effort, kiddo, but if you really wanted to impress me, you should have cooked something you like….know how to make,” Jack commented as Rhys sullenly dumped the chunky souffle mix into the trash, smacking the bowl against the side of the can to get rid of every last mushy lump.

“What…. _do_ you know how to make?”

“H-Hey, I’m not on trial here!” Rhys defended as he nearly chucked the mixing bowl into the sink, making Jack flinch.

“Yeah you are, for crimes against cuisine….And making a mess of my kitchen,” Jack shook his head, peering over to the sink to make sure nothing had been chipped. Rhys was still fuming silently when floated back over to him, a cheeky grin on his face. The omega pouted, looking away from the triumphant alpha.  

“Rhysie…. _kiddo_ ….how did you even feed yourself? I mean god you’re like what…..22?”

“Uh, _no_ Jack, you’ve been in my brain you know how—okay, nevermind, _anyway_ I’m more than capable of feeding myself! I learned how to do it in college.”

“No kidding, you kept that figure on instant ramen and cereal?”

Rhys crossed his arms with a huff. “We had a _dining_ hall you know. I ate _vegetables._ ”

“Bet you wouldn’t know a courgette from kohlrabi.”

“Okay, I’m pretty sure both of those are fake,” Rhys contested but gave in, letting his arms fall to the side as he looked pointedly at Jack.

“Do you want to….do this?”

Jack practically glitched in excitement.

“Oh, _yes_.”

Jack slid over next to Rhys, instantly occupying the same plane as the omega. Rhys shivered, the familiar cold trickle running down his neck as Jack carefully melded with his subsystems, his cybernetic arm lifting and flexing its fingers, the join between them like two rivers converging at this point.

Jack didn’t need any recipe, didn’t even need to pick at Rhys’ brain, as culinarily-inept as it was, as he started guiding Rhys’ arm about the kitchen, body dutifully following.

“We’re gonna file the chocolate souffle away for now, sweetheart. Obviously I could make it if I had my own body, but considering I’m trying to puppet ya here we’re gonna go for something a little harder to screw up,” Jack murmured as he directed Rhys to scoop the flour, leveling the top off with the cybernetic hand he had full control over and dumping it into a clean bowl scavenged from the automatic dishwasher.

Jack  smirked at the look of bemusement on Rhys’ face as he guided the young man through the steps of the recipe. Jack quickly learned he needed a feather-light touch when it came to cracking eggs as Rhys’ fingers weren’t designed for such delicate work. After he’d picked slivers of eggshell out of the yolk with a frown, filing away an idea for a future upgrade, he’d let Rhys crack the remaining eggs before thrusting the bowl in the crook of his flesh arm and feverishly whisking the mixture until his perfect pastry cream bloomed soft and fluffy. Who needed a stand mixer when you had a kid with a robot arm?

Jack dragged one of Rhys’ fingers through the warm cream, lifting it up to the kid’s mouth.

“Go on, pumpkin, try it.”

Rhys glanced at him sideways, sniffing at his own finger like a cat, before daringly licking the tip.

“Oh, _wow_. Jack, that’s….really good…” Rhys gushed, his eyes lighting up. Jack snickered, having to halt Rhys’ hand as it snuck back towards the bowl.

“Easy, let’s wait ‘til they’re done before we chow down, okay?” He patted Rhys’ chin with his own hand, making him set down the bowl as he grabbed for the flour and butter.

Soon enough, the shells of the puffs had finished baking, the flaky, delicious little morsels plumping up on the baking sheet. A quick sojourn in the fridge later and they were cool enough to fill to bursting with the fluffy pastry cream. He let Rhys grasp the top of the pastry bag as he guided the tip inside of each puff, making them bloom with cream one after another until the entire tray had been finished. Jack kissed his fingers, Rhys’ own cybernetic digits brushing up against his lips.

“ _Perfect_ , and hey you didn’t get in the way that much, did ya kiddo?” Jack beamed, carefully detaching himself from the more intimate of Rhys’ subsystems, feeling the level of control drain from him as he flickered away from the young man. He watched Rhys, watched the way his nostrils flared at the smell of the freshly made puffs, the way his tongue flicked out to lick his lips.   

“Wow….these look really good,” Rhys grinned, rubbing his hands together in anticipation, before glancing sidelong at the A.I.

“Uh...maybe if I eat enough of them you’ll be able to taste them?” That would almost seem sincere if Jack didn’t notice the greedy gleam in the omega’s eyes as he looked down at the platefuls of cream puffs. Jealousy prickled in the A.I., but _somebody_ had to go and eat them and Jack wasn’t exactly expecting company.

“All right, sure kitten, go to town,” the A.I. relented. Rhys’ face split into a wide grin as he grabbed the _entire_ plate of cream puffs, popping off to the spacious living room to plop down in one of Jack’s comfy leather couches.

“You’re really setting up shop here, aren’t you?” Jack re-appeared next to Rhys as the young man took a seat, flesh palm already full of three cream puffs as his cybernetic one was busy shoving another treat into his mouth.

“Kiddo, if you choke on that and end up killing the _both_ of us, I swear to god, I’ll have my men destroy everything you care about,” Jack grumbled as Rhys failed to reply to him, too busy chewing through his mouthful of cream and butter and sugar. A bubbling trickle of vanilla squeezed out from his lips as he smirked at Jack.

“Gotta—compensate—for only having one stomach between us,” Rhys said between mouthfuls. Jack felt like he should have been disgusted but he was busy watching the movement of Rhys’ pink lips, underneath all that smeared cream.

Jack didn’t feel any fuller, didn’t taste anything from the amount of puffs that Rhys was steadily packing away, but maybe...maybe if he got in close enough, got their mouths together…

 _Nah_.

* * *

Rhys slowly started to nod off as he got towards the end of the cream puffs. Jack could feel his own consciousness flickering as Rhys started slipping into sleep. The A.I. cursed, looking annoyed towards the cream puffs that would undoubtedly spoil. He didn’t want to see food, even if it was food he couldn’t eat, go to waste, so he touched noses right up with Rhys, making the younger man spark awake.

“Put away the treats, kitten, then you can curl up for a nap, ‘kay?” Jack insisted, leaving Rhys to sleepily clean up the kitchen and pack the remainder of the puffs away into the fridge before he dragged himself to Jack’s massive bed, still unmade from the previous morning.

The A.I. watched as Rhys crawled into the belly of the blankets, rubbing his face against the golden comforter as he hugged them to his chest. Rhys was clearly half out of it already, ready to conk the hell out and send Jack to the fuzzy, half-conscious place that he went to whenever Rhys fell asleep. It wasn’t exactly unpleasant, just...unnerving.

Jack drew his legs up, turning to float on his side, form flickering as Rhys slowly surrendered to sleep, the occasional hypnic jerks and flutters of his eyes gradually smoothing out. Jack sighed, feeling the crawl of fuzzy semi-consciousness crawl over him, fear suddenly clenching inside of him, as it always did during that uncertain moment between Rhys’ consciousness and unconsciousness. Jack tried, as he did every night, to focus on the image of Rhys’ face before him, fear tempered by the knowledge that someday he would be able to lay besides the young man in flesh and blood without existential worry dredging up feelings Jack wasn’t ready to deal with.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Art by http://sky-blue-siha.tumblr.com.


	6. About the Brain

Jack expected the same wavy darkness he’d grown used to whenever Rhys fell asleep.

It’s not how he remembered sleep from when he had a flesh body, it’s nothing like the listless peace that settled over one’s brain whenever it slipped into unconsciousness. It’s similar to the void he was trapped in before Rhys uploaded him into his brain but less _cold_ , less lonely; inside of something living and semi-organic mixed with stiff plastic and intricate metals. Still unpleasant, but not the worst thing he’s been through.

But this time was different.

This time it was like looking through a damp cloth, his senses slightly hampered rather than nearly incapacitated. He could sense things in the vaguest of shapes and sounds, sending flickering feelings through the stripped nerves of his own consciousness. He’s aware of his own form moving, but it was like his brain—or what constituted is his brain in this state—was floating miles away, attached to his arms and legs only remotely, like information traveling from a far-flung part of the universe.

He could make out mumbling that sounds familiar, touching on a recognizable cadence he’s come to find comforting. A shape moved beyond the wet curtain, like a blotch on his fuzzy vision in the vague shape of something human.

Annoyance at the blurriness around him prickled up, futilely trying to will away the haze warping his view. He heard the faint echo of his own grunt, the sound melding off into a voice unlike his own, pitched up into what was definitely a sharp moan.

_The hell?_

He watched as another, vague shadowy shape approached the other, the two forms gradually joining together with a wavy sound that increased in volume, piercing through the muffled shroud wrapped around Jack’s semi-conscious mind. His awareness flinched and flickered as the noises came through clearer, unmistakably colored with notes of _arousal_.

 _Was….was this_ …

A groan cut through his train of thought.

Jack felt the urge to laugh.

Sure, he’d amused himself with rooting through Rhys’ memory files more than once in his stint inside the man’s brain, and there were a fair amount of embarrassing sexual memories locked up there. But, well. Jack hadn’t ever been conscious enough to experience a bonafide wet dream _first hand_.

Not that he was really able to make out much. The muzzy fog still separating his synthetic brain from Rhys’ flesh one persisted between them, denying Jack’s voyeurism much clarity. It was like watching a shadow-puppet show, if the shadow puppets were your fanboy meatsuit and whatever the object of his affection could possibly be—

Jack stilled as a garbled moan that _might_ have been a name wailed out from the shifting mist.

 _No….no way_.

Rhys was...he was a freaky little fanboy, yeah...after all, Jack had inadvertently seen all of the merchandise Rhys had when he’d been packing up some necessities in his old apartment to bring up to the penthouse. And sure, he’d netted a couple of interesting thoughts and vague memories from the streams of consciousness flowing around the more solid mental nuggets in Rhys’ brain, but those had been mild entertainment and fodder for teasing and little more. Not something Jack had ever really taken that seriously. After all, it would be crazy for anyone on Helios to _not_ idolize Jack, not with the way he’d sunk his image deep into the very infrastructure of the space station.

But it was quite a different thing to witness it first hand, muddled as it might be.

Jack felt a dirty little thrill run through him as the vague shapes moved, grasping at each other and rutting their forms together as more moans floated about. They existed just beyond his reach, Rhys and whoever he was getting it on with, their identity masked by the fuzziness of the dream and anonymity of their moans. He kept watching, the moans growing louder and louder until they finally reached their peak, nearly breaking upon his consciousness before finally fading away.

Jack felt the fuzziness of the void pull at him again but he lets it, feeling pleased and cheeky at adding yet another filthy secret of Rhys’ to his growing repertoire.

* * *

Jack fluttered back to wakefulness, his form coalescing right where he’d left it. Rhys, however, was no longer resting on his side in an ever-growing puddle of drool. Jack furrowed his brow, turning over to see the omega already standing up.

“There you are.” Rhys managed to smile, though the usual rosy color of his lips seemed wan. His bare legs, too, were shaking slightly. Topping that all off with the fact that Jack usually didn’t wake up this long after Rhys regained consciousness and the A.I. was already worrying.

“You okay, pumpkin? Bad dream or something?”

“Oh no, no, nothing like that,” Rhys chuckled faintly, running his hands through his hair. It looked limp and shiny, but not in that good, slick way Jack was used to. Did Rhys even take a shower yesterday? Had...yesterday been the gala? Time was fuzzy lately.

“Just, _um_ , I got a message from the doctor? They….they want us both to come in. They wouldn’t give me any more details since you were still...dormant?”

“ _Hmph_. I’m not a volcano.” Jack’s nerves bristled, more at the doctor’s attitude than Rhys’ comment. They seemed pretty cagey about giving any direct information, which was stupid. Jack preferred straightforward answers to any meandering drivel but all he’d been getting lately from the medical team was a big fat stream of it.

Rhys took a good minute to find and put on his pants, his hands shaking in a way Jack hadn’t seen since the kid had to peel some guy’s face off of a psycho. Jack’s own hands glitched in a need to help as Rhys pulled an unwashed Hyperion hoodie on, nearly getting his clunky cybernetic elbow caught in the sleeve. The heels were ignored for a pair of comfortable loafers and once Rhys was done scraping himself together he looked more a college student during finals week than a stylish co-CEO.

Jack let it go, for now, hovering close behind Rhys as the young man made his way towards the door and down to the medical ward.  

* * *

“Omegas are….perhaps a little more _susceptible_ to nerve damage, due to the stress of their heats, but without probable cause the extent of the damage in such a short time is…. _unusual_.”

Even Rhys’ long legs can’t touch the floor as he sat on the medical table, listening. He weakly held his cybernetic palm facing upwards, making sure the tiny A.I. was intimidatingly level with the doctor’s face. The holograms arms are crossed tightly, fingers tapping against his forearm.

“Unusual, unusual _what_ , I feel like you’re kind of beating around the bush here, cupcake.” Jack’s annoyance, though undercut by his current incorporeality and size, was nearly palpable. The little bob of the doctor’s throat as Jack glared at her brought him a little consolation.

“Unusual, in that....we are not yet entirely sure what the cause might be. Or how to properly treat it.”

“ _Reaaaally_ not the answer I wanted to hear, but you already know that, don’t ya?” Jack snapped, striding near to the tips of Rhys’ fingers. “So my question is, if you _know_ how much this would piss me off, why haven’t you knuckleheads bashed your skulls together until you come up with an answer so I _don’t_ use your corpses for target practice?”

“Jack, _stop_ , they’re trying okay?” Rhys croaked, thumping his flesh hand against the table as he clenched his cybernetic fist, causing the A.I.’s projection to stumble and flicker. Jack turned around to fix Rhys’ with a glare through it was hard to be that pissed at the pale omega and his half pleading, half frustrated eyes. Jack huffed, scuffing his feet against Rhys’ palm.

“I understand your frustration. But there is medication and therapy that can slow the degeneration and limit further damage until we find a solution to the omega’s issue. And we _will_ find it, Handsome Jack, sir.” The doctor stood besides the table, putting her hand on Rhys’ forearm in a matter Jack hated but seemed to soften both of their worry. He even smiled, slight as it was, giving Jack a little relief.

“I recommend being very careful with your cerebral cybernetics until we’re able to slow or halt the nerve damage. From our tests, it seems like Rhys’ system is overcompensating from the lack of nerve response, and is instead drawing power from your programming, sir.”

“So….like….the kid’s using me as a frikkin’ battery?” Jack’s eyebrows shot up.

“I….in a way, yes, so it’s best to be…. _mindful_. It’s possible extensive use could be exacerbating the issue and might lead to interference between both of your systems. Just take it easy, the both of you.” She typed quickly on her tablet, the device chiming in confirmation.

“The pharmacy should have your medication shortly. Do you have any further questions for me?”

“No, doctor, thank you,” Rhys spoke before Jack had the chance. The A.I. grunted, dismissing her with a stiff nod.

He waited besides Rhys as the young man received his medication from the pharmacist, pleased that there was _something_ they could do to ease this but annoyed that it wasn’t yet _fixed_ . He juggled between a raise and an airlock as potential motivators as he dwelled on the limitations the small amount of information he’d received seemed to levy on not just Rhys, but _himself_ as well.

Jack _was_ capable of taking over Rhys’ body in the event that the other man had been incapacitated in any way other than willful sleep. At least, that’s how it’d used to be.

But ever since the gala, doubt over this ability had dogged him. He’d carefully tried a few times, so slight that Rhys probably barely noticed, and noticed some...responsivity problems that hadn’t been there before this mess had begun. He wondered, in retrospect, if that was linked to the effects of the omega’s nerve issues.

The thought that he couldn’t reliably pilot Rhys’ body in an emergency for fear of damaging the kid further made him feel cramped and frustrated. Mostly because if anything bad happened to Rhys’ brain it’d increase the likelihood of his own coding getting seriously screwed. And with Rhys’ system apparently drawing energy from his own, well...he’d have to be aware of that.

Jack just hoped that the next appointment would result in some better news.


	7. Concerning His Feelings

_Son of a bitch_.

That was all that rang through Jack’s head as he watched the laboratory techs wipe off the puncture sites in Rhys’ skin. _Again_ with the damn needles. Jack had memories of needles from way back when he had first gone under the knife himself and needed to be pumped full of anaesthesia so he wouldn’t feel his surgeons cutting and breaking his face into its current handsome state. Jack was pleased he’d had his old surgical records wiped from existence because damn, those clinical photos had been decidedly _un_ -handsome.

So it aggravated him that these nerds seemed obsessed with sticking Rhys every time they had an appointment, usually _multiple_ times per visit. He’d be less pissed if all the fluid they were sucking from Rhys’ body was actually _leading_ to something but, as he’d been told time and time again for the past month, they still had very little concrete leads in terms of what was wrong with the omega. So far nothing—bacterial, viral, animal, vegetable or mineral—had turned up.

Rhys being sick was worrying enough on his own. Rhys being sick with something that even his top paid medics couldn’t seem to diagnose was even worse. And Rhys being sick with something indeterminable while also worsening day by day was the cherries on the crap sundae.

Jack had never really been a book guy. Most information he needed could be found on the ECHOnet anyway, and the only real reason for needing books was the novelty or if your eyes strained pretty bad by constantly glaring at bright blue screens. Which...well, considering Jack _was_ kind of a big ol’ bright blue screen right now, that wasn’t really something that bothered him. He just really hadn’t been much of a book dude, even before his body’s passing, which was something he regretted now because the gnawing realization that he couldn’t instantly know and more importantly _fix_ what was wrong with Rhys was pissing him off. Yeah, he didn’t have to know a lot about this stuff because he paid other people to do it, but when these _other_ people didn’t have any clue either then it threw the hologram into a bit of a frenzy.  

“Our lab is working as hard as it can on finding a cure, Handsome Jack sir,” the doctor assured to the little projection on Rhys’ palm. The kid himself was resting, still conscious but tired from the day’s ordeal of testing, leaving Jack to speak with the physician. The hologram paced in circles around Rhys’ palm, muttering as he took the occasional sour glance up at the doctor.

“I know, I _know_ you freaks have been working on it, but it’s been a _month_ now and he’s only getting worse and worse!”

“While it’s true his condition had taken a steep decline, it has been plateauing in the past few days, sir.”

Jack stopped to glare, his hands held behind his back. God, this was why he _hated_ being projected in Rhys hand, especially when the omega was lying down like this. He couldn’t _tower_ over people like he used to, like he could when he had the capacity to project to normal or greater size, he couldn’t use that to intimidate them into rubbing their fingers to the bone trying to find a cure for Rhys. Yeah. _That_ was the main problem he was running into here.

“You all are on extended hours until you find something for him. I don’t care how many skulls you have to crack before you bash through this. Just _do_ it and you’ll get a fat stack of a bonus instead of my hands around your necks, got it?” He spat, waggling a tiny finger that he _hoped_ was intimidating at the doctor above him. If she thought anything of it, it didn’t show in her expression but she did obediently nod at him.

“Certainly sir, I can assure you, the entire wing of Medical Research is dedicated to reversing the issues you are experiencing with your host,” she replied in a clipped tone before taking a long look at Rhys.

“I only have one question for you, sir…”

“Yeah, what?” Jack replied petulantly.

“What were you planning to do about his heat?”

* * *

To speak honestly, Jack sometimes forgot that Rhys _was_ an omega.

Without the clear, innate olfactory feedback that came with having a physical body instead of an artificial projection, it was easy to kind of ignore. Sure, Rhys’ subsystems would report and file certain scents, even tag them with a person’s visuals, but that’s all Jack got—pure data, devoid of instinct.

Back when he was still solid, scents were practically inescapable, wrapping up every single social interaction in a cocoon of shedding pheromones that conveyed everything from fear to respect to friendship to lust. Jack knew the stereotype, that omegas were practically slaves to their own scents and instinctive responses, but as an alpha Jack knew very well they experienced the same deal—they just collectively had enough social clout to ignore it.

But whether Jack was consistently aware of it or not, Rhys was an omega. He was an omega, and like all omegas, every couple of months his body would force him into heat, turning him into little more than a moaning, weak little bitch desperate to be bred. Typically, omegas tempered this by taking suppressors or other drugs, but Rhys had been ordered off all medication as the research team tried to determine what was causing his illness and curtailed Jack’s list of feasible options.

He fretted that it was stupid to let Rhys to go into heat while he was in such a delicate position, but the alternative seemed even more worrisome. The amount of heat suppressants that would be needed to prolong its onset would undoubtedly mess with the balance of Rhys’ hormones, which would do god knows what to Rhys’ already fragile brain and nervous system. Considering his scientist’s still hadn’t zeroed in on exactly _what_ was causing this degeneration, Jack didn’t want to take any chances introducing new medication until they knew for sure it wouldn’t exacerbate Rhys’ already shaky condition.

So he’d given the okay for the kid to go ahead and have his heat. Sending the biological mechanisms of Rhys’ body chugging at breakneck speed towards Breedington. But naturally, that led to its own list of issues.

Heats, though natural, were stressful on omega bodies. Jack had never been with an omega himself, preferring the steadfast, no-bullshit nature of fellow alphas, but he had a textbook knowledge about how their heats work, even if he didn’t fully comprehend the biological meat of the whole ordeal. He knew omegas were usually so overwhelmed with arousal and need for an alpha’s knot that they wouldn’t be able to focus on anything else. Not even basic need for the essentials would cut through lusty fog of their witless minds, leaving them vulnerable to dehydration, hunger, and accidents. Jack didn’t know how bad Rhys’ heats would get, and the young man’s reporting was shaky at best, describing his needy fevers as intense, but not disabling, which still left Jack primarily in the dark with what to expect.

Neither his scientists nor any books he found on the subject helped him much either. Sure, there were plenty of resources for alphas on how to deal with heated omegas, but most of them were written on the assumption that that alpha, uh, had a body of their own.   

After all this was said and done, Jack promised himself he’d write his own book on his experiences, just in case somewhere out there there was another hapless alpha that’d been unwillingly turned into a hologram and jammed into an omega’s brain.

So his current plan was to jam his fridge with food and water, have a doctor on-call, and help the kid out as needed. Some of the R&D researchers had offered to keep Rhys in one of the observation rooms for the duration of his heat, but Jack found the idea of his omega host bared and vulnerable in front of all those clinical eyes and bathed in stark white light with not a shred of comfort or privacy pretty detestable. Technically it wasn’t _his_ body, but Rhys was his host, and he didn’t want him to be so exposed around these creeps. Maybe it wasn’t the smartest choice, but no one was going to challenge him so he was going through with it.

That didn’t mean Jack wasn’t just a teensy bit nervous about it, though.

Rhys probably felt the same way. According to what he’d told Jack, it’d been a long while since he’d had a proper heat— _years_ , even, which had Jack puzzled. Rhys was a decent-looking enough omega, surely _someone_ had been willing to hop on that heat train in all those years? He guessed maybe the kid was one of those “save it for bonding” types, but he didn’t want to _guess_ he wanted to _know_. And to add to the suspicion, Rhys had grown unusually quiet when Jack had pressed him about mates and heats, his lips pressed tightly even when Jack had gotten right up into his face. Literally.

“Kitten, what’s the big deal? You know I can just poke around in your memory files a bit anyway, so why act all cagey about it?” He floated just above where Rhys was reclining on the couch, desperately trying to ignore Jack as he focused on what colorful noises was blaring from the ECHO-TV monitor.

“Why don’t you do that, then, instead of bothering me?” Rhys deadpanned, groping around a bowl of kettle corn and clumsily stuffing it in his mouth. Jack frowned, rolling over on his back and tipping his chin back to look back, upside-down, at his idle host.   

“I mean, I _guess_ , but it’s a lot more juicy if I bug you until you crack,” Jack stated, crossing his arms over his chest as he glared at Rhys. Waiting. But Rhys kept his eyes focused on the television display, idly dropping popcorn into his mouth, the occasional kernel tumbling down his chest and lying there, unattended by the uncaring omega. Jack bristled with annoyance, disappearing from above Rhys to appear right in front of the whatever crap the man was zoning out too.

It either took a moment for Rhys to realize that Jack had moved or his ignoring skills were on full blast, because he kept disregarding the A.I. until Jack got close enough to cause the display to glitch out from the interference. Finally, Rhys sighed, plopping his bowl of popcorn onto the floor as he pulled himself up in a sitting position.

“Is there a reason you’re being so...so…. _persistent_?” Jack could tell Rhys was trying to frame this politely. The A.I. tapped his chin, tilting his head to the side like an inquisitive puppy.

“Because it’s fun. A lot more fun than floating around and watching you stuff your face full of snacks.”

Rhys looked Jack dead in the eyes as he reached over, grabbed an overflowing handful of popcorn, and shoved it into his mouth.

“Look at you. You eat like you haven’t been spoiling your stomach with _my money_ every single day.”

Rhys chewed the mouthful of popcorn slowly, holding up a finger to keep Jack quiet as he swallowed with a tight gasp.

“I’m carb-loading you see. Heats burn a lot of energy, and I’m gonna need a lot of it stored up if I’m gonna survive this on my own.”

Jack scoffed.

“Uh, you’re not on your own, kitten. In case you forgot, I’m gonna be here with you.”

“ _Okaaay_. Because having you stuck in my head and not like, you know, actually physically around, is really going to help me…”

“ _Hey_ , I’m working with what I’ve got, you know this isn’t exactly ideal for me either,” Jack pouted, brows furrowing, “besides, if things get really bad you can always….just….you know…”

“Yeah, I know, you put the alpha-agency on speed dial, which is...kind of shocking, honestly.”

“Yeah, well, that’s a frikkin’ last resort. You might be on the fast track to horny blisstown, but _I’m_ gonna be pretty damn conscious, and if I don’t have to, I don’t wanna have some prick’s prick up what is essentially _my_ ass.” Jack stated firmly, waggling his finger in emphasis front of Rhys’ nose. The young man rolled his eyes with a sigh.

“You know….maybe it’d help you loosen up a little bit, Jack, to be knotted.” Jack pulled a face, his lips turning down in disgust.

“ _Alphas_ don’t get knotted, sugar.”

“Someone hasn’t spent a lot of time looking at all the kinds of porn they have on the ECHOnet.”

“How _dare_ you call my porno tastes into question.”

“Okay, but...um...wasn’t the Sheriff an alpha…?” Rhys asked quietly. Jack’s frown only deepened, looking away from Rhys as he stared firmly out the living room window.

“I don’t know. I guess. So fine, okay, then _I_ don’t get knotted. Doesn’t happen.”

“Never say never.” Rhys rolled onto his belly, hugging a pillow to his chest as he watched Jack follow his own gaze over to the window, his flickering blue form floating nearly nose-to-nose with the thick glass.

“ _Anyway_ , let’s hope you don’t need another alpha because if you get pregnant I’m just gonna delete my code to save myself from that ordeal.”

Rhys snorted through a laugh.

“I’m pretty sure the agencies make their alphas use _condoms_ and junk like that. They don’t exactly wanna deal with the liability of their employees knocking up random omegas. That’s how you get sued.”

“Okay but it’s not _foolproof_ kiddo and I swear I will go insane if I gotta deal with even more weirdass hormones and crap while we’re _trying_ to run a business.”

“Oh, I see, so omegas can’t run big fancy companies ‘cause they might get pregnant, right? And start being irrational?” Rhys rolled his eyes.

“Jeez kiddo, why’re you so damn sensitive?” Jack raised his eyebrow.

“I dunno, maybe because _my heat is about to start_?”

“So, you’re proving my point, then?”

Rhys glared at Jack, before rolling around to stubbornly face the back of the couch.

“You’re a _dick_.”

“Aw, c’mon kiddo, you know I don’t mean it. Besides, you ain’t like most other omegas. You got the brains and ambition to really back it up, even if this biology crap takes you down a peg every once and awhile,” Jack states as he walks closer. Rhys keeps on burning eyeholes in the upholstery of the couch like a stubborn brat. _Okay_.

Jack didn’t try to press after Rhys didn’t respond to his needling. The kid barely budged from his spot for a good ten minutes, at which point he sighed and sat up, tucking his hands behind his head and leaning back.

“I’m….super bored. I feel like I’m just waiting around for my heat to strike with nothing else to _do_.”

“You wanna see what’s on?” Jack gestured towards the television, eager to pick up conversation after Rhys had ignored him for so long. Rhys pursed his lips, considering, before turning on the television and flipping through the programs.

Jack had been hoping that Rhys would put on something cool, like a retro mobster movie or an erotic thriller, but to his displeasure Rhys stopped on something bright and colorful and full of so many cheesy jokes and romantic dialogue and so clearly targeted towards omegas that Jack was already groaning a minute in.

“Holey moley Rhys, how can you stomach this stuff?” Jack rolled his eyes as the two (literally) star crossed lovers met in the dazzling capital city of a neutral planet.

“ _Shh_. It’s right before my heat. I’m allowed to be a stereotype.” Rhys had retrieved his popcorn, tossing it into his mouth as, to Jack’s horror, the two lovers began to _sing_.

“Oh my god. It’s a frikkin _musical_?” Jack practically howled, quickly getting shushed by Rhys. The A.I. scowled, reluctantly trying to find something he liked in the gaudy display before him. The omega lead was all right looking, a cute sandy blonde that danced like a fluttering bird around his burly alpha lover. Jack was pretty sure their height difference was exaggerated to make all the omegas watching blush, and as the alpha twirled the omega to come rest against his chest in the middle of their duet, the A.I. could feel a giddy little flutter creep over from Rhys’ brain. He made a disgusted noise butut Rhys either ignored him or didn’t notice as he watched the music number with a pleasant smile.

Jack returned his gaze back to the movie, watching as the pair danced their way up to the roof of one of the cities many buildings, the camera panning out to get a great panorama of the sky behind the couple. The moon was abnormally big and tinged blue and definitely enhanced with effects, but as the song slowed in intimacy, the omega and alpha again meeting with their forms silhouetted against the sky, Jack felt something soft tug at him. The alpha’s arms were really nice and strong, muscular but not cut in freakish, unappealing bulk. He held the omega so tenderly like he might break otherwise, but tight enough as if he was worried the lithe little guy would end up floating off and away from him. Jack shifted in place, peering closer as the two lovers faced one another, holding both their hands together and _jeez_ , the omega’s hands were so fine and small compared to their alphas, and all Jack wanted right then was to be held and hugged as the pair closed their eyes and brought their lips together in front of the moonlight—

“ _Ugh_ , I’d rather bash my head through a wall then watch any more of _this_ crap!” Jack exclaimed as he jumped up from the couch, moving his hands through his chest as if he could shoo away the stupid mushy feelings trying to invade him. To his surprise, Rhys shut off the television as the musical’s orchestra was just starting to fade away, the omega letting out a sigh.

“You’re right….I’ve already seen it a million times anyway. Should try something else...” To Jack’s surprise, the kid wandered over to the rows of books squashed in the entertainment center underneath the vintage game systems and shadow boxes full of trinkets and trophies too intimate or insignificant for Jack’s main office.

“Ugh. Reading? You’re going to _read_?” Jack rolled his eyes as Rhys’ fingers trailed over the spines of his books. “Why are you so _boring_.”

“They’re _your_ books.”

“Yeah, but they’re just for impressing company.”

“Well, I’m technically company, aren’t I?” Rhys said as he nudged out one particularly large book and peered at the glossy dust jacket.

“ _10001 Planets to Visit Before You Die_?”

“Oh man, I don’t even _remember_ buying that one….you know, I’m pretty sure the bookcase just came to me already stuffed with pretty looking stuff. I haven’t actually looked at any of it, ha ha.”

Rhys ignored him and flipped the book over, reading the synopsis.

“This is like….something I’d expect to find in some touristy gift shop in the Hub.”

“Well, you don’t _have_ read it.” Jack huffed as Rhys cracked open the book, sniffing at the smell of glossy ink.

“Have you?” Rhys smirked as he flipped through the stiff pages, his eyes fluttering over the wordy columns and huge, full-color illustrations.

“Of course I have! Well, _sometimes_. I mean you can get most of this information on the ECHOnet. So I can look at what planets I wanna conquer next.”

“Arms manufacturing might be big business, but it’s not the _only_ thing Hyperion can dip its fingers into. I hear that Himeros has a flourishing adult film industry that’s just _begging_ for large-scale distribution and subsidies.”

“As if you’d ever watch a porno involving anyone who _isn’t_ you,” Rhys hummed as he quickly flipped through a couple of pages. Jack rolled his eyes.

“Of course having me there makes it _better_ but I’m not gonna turn my nose up at watching two hot omegas make out.” Rhys cleared his throat in disgust, scooting away from Jack until he leaned against the arm of the chair.

“I can’t believe you’re still such an _alpha_ when you’re just a hologram...guess some things just can’t be changed, huh…”

Rhys grew quiet, his fingers lingering on the page open in his lap.

“I...I kind of like this one.” Jack floated besides him, peering over the omega’s shoulder.

Both pages were dominated by a huge, full-color spread depicting the landscape of a planet Jack didn’t recognize at first. It kind of looked like Elpis, with reflective, obsidian earth that dropped in craggy valleys and towered in chunky plateaus. The sky bared directly into space, distant stars painted over with splattering auroras printed in holographic ink, the color changing as Rhys’ hands slightly shifted the book.  A couple of informatory paragraphs, as well as the name “Nyx” glimmered in silver script near the top of the left page. Jack tutted in recognition.

“Of _course_ , Rhysie, of frikkin’ course you would pick the planet that has _barely any oxygen_.” Rhys sighed, flipping the book shut and sliding it onto the table.  

“You know, too much oxygen can kill you, right? Maybe a little less oxygen would be _good_ for me,” Rhys kicked his feet up on the table, toes wiggling in his socks.

“You really are Daddy’s favorite idiot, aren’t ya?” Jack snickered. Rhys didn’t even bother to glare at him this time and merely shut his eyes.

“I’ve only been to two. Is that weird?”

Jack raised his eyebrow.

“Huh?”

Rhys opened his eyes slightly, tilting his head in Jack’s direction.

“I’ve only been to two planets. My home and Pandora, that’s weird, huh?”

Jack scoffed.

“Jeez, not too adventurous, are ya?”

“ _Okay_ , Mr. Hero, how many planets have you been on?”

“Mmm? I dunno. But _a lot_.”

“So many you can’t count, right? I should have guessed that.” Rhys chuckled softly, turning to lie down on the couch, long legs propped up against the arm. He didn’t even bother taking off his shoes as he stretched out with a yawn.

“Yanno, pumpkin, got a _perfectly_ good bed just sitting over there.” Jack jerked his thumb in the direction of the bedroom. Rhys sighed happily, not moving a muscle.

“I’m just taking a nap, ‘kay? Body needs a lot of sleep. You know. Heat ‘n all that.” Rhys mumbled, folding his arms over his belly. Jack stayed, watching him for a couple more minutes as Rhys steadily drifted towards sleep. Soon, he could feel his form flickering softly, relenting. He suppressed a yawn brought on by Rhys’ as he tipped his chin back and shut his eyes.

 _Wouldn’t be too bad to take a break_ , he thought. _The next week or so was gonna be_ crazy _._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Art by http://sky-blue-siha.tumblr.com.tumblr.com.


	8. Throughout the Fever

Rhys’ heat came on much more slowly than Jack had expected.

He thought heats hit omegas like a crash-landing transport, smashing into them with sudden fever and driving them into near-instant lust that forced them to their knees with their slick asses stuck up into the air. Jack had been waiting for that hammer to drop, keeping a careful eye on the omega’s behavior and paying close attention to the connection between Rhys’ brain and his own digital consciousness. Jack found that he didn’t want to bug the omega as much as he had before. Moments where he would usually crack a joke or comment on the omega’s appearance were now spent quietly watching, observing Rhys’ expressions and body language for a sign that his heat was about to hit. It filled him with an anxiety he still wasn’t used to. A kind of _caring_ —like the way one cared for a house or piece of land. Wanting it well-maintained and protected from hazards... _obviously_. The omega was basically his home, right?

He repeatedly logged Rhys’ temperature, pouring over the numbers as they started to curve upwards. Every climbing integer strained Jack’s anticipation tighter but Rhys remained mostly aware and grounded. He did start to take more baths—running the water a couple degrees cooler than usual—and drink more water, usually keeping a heavy bottle of it on hand as he attended the last handful of meetings before the window that his heat was due to strike.

The slow build left Jack annoyed. He wanted the onset of Rhys’ heat to be akin to a bandage that he could simply rip off, rather than steadily peel it away and fray his nerves further in the process. He briefly considered playing around with Rhys’ hormones for a bit and seeing if he could push the omega over the edge to end his anxiety but the doctor’s warning rang in his head every time he gave it much thought. So he stewed in his frustration until one morning when he was awoken with a sudden start as Rhys shot up in the bed, covered in sweat and whimpering in a soft, strangled way that immediately had Jack bright and alert and staring.

Still, Rhys had enough strength in his body to carefully hobble to the kitchen, though Jack didn’t miss the way his thighs brushed together a little tighter than usual. He followed behind Rhys, any words he had kept tight behind his lips as he watched the young man grab his full, heavy bottle of water and a few of the bags of pretzels and beef jerky that Jack had recommended for easy, ready-to-eat snacks. Rhys quickly scurried back into the bedroom, taking a long drink from his water before he slammed it back onto the nightstand with the rest of his snacks. He took several long, deep breaths, deliberately slowing the pace of his lungs. He raised his eyes to look at Jack, who had taken a floated position just below his splayed, stretched out legs.

“I….Jack…”

“Is it...starting? For real?” Jack asked after a moment, though he already knew the answer. It was obvious from the glazed look in Rhys’ eyes, from the way his lips were slack and already starting to glisten with drool. Rhys only drooled when he was sleeping or jacking off, and considering a heat was like, a super boner….

Rhys couldn’t even manage an answer for him, his entire body going boneless as he fell back against the bed with a soft _thump_.

Well. That wasn’t good.

But Jack wasn’t about to freak out. He had definitely prepared for this, as had Rhys. They had food and water in stock and within reach. And Rhys wasn’t an idiot, even blitzed out of his mind on wacky omega hormones, he should still be able to know how to frikkin’ masturbate his way through his heat. Hell, he should be able to figure out how to use all those fancy toys that Jack had stuffed into the nightstand drawer. He’d gone a little bit crazy, purposefully adding things to Rhys’ ECHOcart when the young man wasn’t paying attention and feigning surprise when box after box of omega aids were sent up to the penthouse’s front door.

Rhys had everything he needed and more, practically a spoiled pet of an omega. He could do this. He probably wouldn’t even need Jack’s help to get through this.

* * *

Jack couldn’t take this anymore.

The doctor had warned him that, with the increased interfacing between his and Rhys’ sub-systems as the latter used the former as a crutch, there might be more feedback between Rhys’ physical feelings and his own. Jack had played it off. Sure, he and Rhys had been uh, closer emotionally lately—except not _like that_ , just. Well, sometimes Rhys would feel hungry or tired or see something that triggered a response and Jack would feel ghosts of those sensations that hadn’t been there before.

But it was worse now. Much worse.

He didn’t know if that meant their interfacing was deepening or if Rhys’ heat was just particularly strong. If the latter was true, then Jack felt a genuine pang of sympathy for omegas across the galaxies, because this….this was _not_ fun. And he wasn’t even feeling the full brunt of it.

“Rhys,” he called, trying to bring the young man to his senses. But Rhys continues to lay flat on his back, naked and sweating. His chest rises and falls in erratic, rapid bursts, face flushed bright red. His eyelids are quivering, as if his eyes are racing back and forth, flickering to and from unseen entities.

Jack reappeared right above Rhys’ face, teeth gritted together as a jolt of unwanted need flickers through him.

“ _Rhys_ , wake up,” Jack probed his finger right through Rhys’ face, making his expression twitch. Jack’s eyes widened, hopeful, but the young omega doesn’t wake up.

“Rhys, wake up right now or I swear I’ll overload your nerves and fry your _stupid brain,_ ” Jack commanded. He stayed, watching and quiet, for a long second before swearing.

“What am I supposed to do here, pumpkin?” Jack said to himself, sitting upright as he crossed his legs, propping his chin up in his palm. He tapped his lip, eyes narrowing in thought.

He could feel Rhys’ need through their connection—not only his ever-present need for sex, for a proper knot, but also similarly base essentials like food and water. There was a half-empty bottle of water right next to Rhys on the nightstand and a bag of jerky and some crackers right next to it but none of it mattered if Rhys didn’t actually _move_ his horny, comatose ass and shove them down his craw.

“God damn it...do I really have to do all the work around here?”

Jack really didn’t want to do this. But he hated the idea of inviting another alpha into his apartment, or even one of Rhys’ little friends, while he was trapped in the kid’s head without a proper jack into Helios _and_ while Rhys was currently vulnerable and out of commission. If some bastard wanted to infiltrate Jack’s most sacred inner sanctum, or if they wanted to _do_ something to Rhys while the omega was under the heavy influence of his heat, then there was no way Jack was going to throw the doors open wide and invite them with open arms.

So he steeled himself, summoning all the bolstered strength of his code, and forced open Rhys’ subsystems.

He felt, briefly, a little dirty about how easy it was to worm himself into control of Rhys’ body with the young man’s guard down like this. However, any other feelings were erased a moment later when sudden, uncontrollable, _burning_ arousal flooded every inch of his conscious brain and set his— _Rhys’_ —skin on fire.

Jack screamed, his voice garbled through Rhys’ vocal cords as the man’s entire body shook and trembled, the A.I. fumbling through Rhys’ nerves like a newborn skag. Every cord of muscle vibrated as if it had been plucked, fibers rubbing together so harshly that the friction felt like it had caught aflame. Jack swore, his vocal cadence harsh in Rhys’ mouth as he flopped back against the bed, struggling as the young man’s body forced him to take involuntary breaths.

 _Okay_. _Okay_. _Maybe this was going to be harder than he thought_. That seemed to be the trend of the heat so far.

“S-shit’s really….hitting the frying pan...huh…” Jack blubbered around the clumsy tongue in his mouth. Damn, even his idioms were getting screwed by this.

He blearily remembered Rhys’ need for water—rather, he was smacked in the gut by it with the sudden awareness of the cotton feeling in his mouth and the rumbling growl in his belly.

Food and drink, he missed. Hunger and thirst, he could do without.

He took a couple deep, heavy breaths, clenching his eyes shut. He ground Rhys’ teeth together, sweaty forehead creased as he mustered up the strength remaining in the man’s trembling muscles and pushed himself up off the bed.

His arms shook. _One, two_. They failed to steady, but held up.

The room around him swam, the yellow and white paint on the walls blending together, all of his portraits and pictures fading in and out of focus. He couldn’t make out which ones were of his face and which were the rusty, sunset-strewn landscapes of far-off planets.

All right, Jack. _Rhysie_. Rh….syack.

He’d think of a better name for them later. When Rhys was a little less _dying_ and he was a little more conscious, not wrapped up in the radiating dizziness of the kid’s heat.

Time to get up. He breathed, trying to force air through Rhys’ tightening lungs as he swung his legs forcefully over the edge of the bed. Jack flinched as Rhys’ heels knocked against the floor unexpectedly, sending a shock of pain through the tightness and burning of the heat and causing him to briefly lose control. He steadied himself, lifting Rhys’ head from where it had flopped against his shoulder.

Damn kid. He didn’t remember _legs_ being this long.

Rhys was all legs, Jack thought muzzily as he stared down at the offending limbs, stretched out limp and lazy over the edge of the bed. Super pale. Almost like he was seeing a ghost. A real ghost. Not like his hazy, flickery A.I. form. All they had in common was that they couldn’t see themselves in the mirror.

Jack rubbed Rhys’ feet against the black carpet. His left foot was missing a sock. The other one was decorated in little pink ponies. When had Rhys bought these?

Right. Water. Food. Crap.

Jack grunted, shoving himself up off the bed in annoyance at his own forgetfulness, only to nearly collapse and eat shit against the floor. He managed to grab onto the nightstand with Rhys’ flesh-hand, the skin horribly warm against the cool lacquer of the wood.

“ _Ghh_ ….okay...okay…” Jack groaned as he steadied himself, those damn baby-giraffe legs shaking, nearly knocking their knees together. He pushed himself up a little more gingerly this time, swaying as he straightened up. Ugh, why did he get frikkin’ carpet in his bedroom? Carpet was so god- _damn_ hot on Rhys’ stupid feet. Especially the stupid foot with the stupid sock with the admittedly really cute unicorns patterned on it.

He needed to stop looking at the sock.

Jack ground his sweaty feet against the carpet as he fumbled Rhys’ body on over to the doorway to the living room, nearly bonking his head against the ajar door before he leaned heavily on it, swinging it fully open with his body weight.

The living room seemed like a desert, with the way his body was throbbing with heat. His legs quivered with each step as he pushed from doorframe to lamp to coffee table to couch to wall across the room. He grunted, scrabbling against the wall and accidentally turning on the overhead lights. He hissed at the sudden brightness, scrunching his eyes up for a moment as he mustered the strength to stagger into the next room.

The kitchen was far, far cooler than the rest of the house, even the living room. God. _Tile_. Frikkin’ bless tile. He should put tile in his entire penthouse. Every room. Though knowing Rhys’ the kid would probably end up spilling something and slip and knock all those expensive brain cybernetics outta his ears.

Jack found plenty of snacks in the fridge and pantry still, and thank god for that because he—and Rhys—were practically starving to death. Everything looked good to Jack. For a moment he forgot the food he enjoyed before his death, likes and dislikes blending together and completely pointless before the rumbling need deep in his belly.

He started with a giant, brightly colored bag of cookies that Rhys must have rooted through at some point already, because one corner of the bag was clumsily torn open. The first cookie he shoved into his mouth was pretty stale, sending a flash of fear through him, but as he got deeper and deeper into the bag they started to taste fresher and more delicious. His sense of taste was still muted, a slight metallic twang on the tip of his tongue, but it was _something_.

Something more than he’d gotten the past couple of months.

He continued eating cookies until his finger scraped the oily bottom of the bag, and even then he tipped it back, letting the sweet, crumbly dust shake out onto his tongue.

The empty bag crinkled underneath his foot as he stalked over to the fridge, craving something savory and full of _salt_.

There was a big, glass tupperware full of that glistening, dressed fish stuff that Rhys had been ordering lately. Jack considered himself pretty worldly when it came to all the cuisines of the galaxy, but even he wasn’t sure exactly what was up with this stuff. Apparently they were famous in Aquator and had opened up a couple shops on Helios. Jack had seen Rhys pile the stuff on top of rice and dot it with green onions and fried garlic. He peeled the lid off of the tupperware, taking a cursory sniff.

The meaty smell that curled into his nose had him salivating, and before Jack knew it he was shoving handfuls of the fish and rice into his mouth, letting out groans and gasps of enjoyment as he shoved it down his throat, chewing with relish.

Man. What an awesome thing it was. To chew.

He tore apart the meat with his teeth, Rhys’ omega fangs tiny but sharp as they pierced through the fatty chunks of tuna. He shoved the food into his mouth in handfuls, licking his fingers and the interior of the tupperware as soon as he had finished. He fumbled with the lid, fingers still coated with saliva and somewhat greasy from sesame oil, eventually just shoving the empty container back into the fridge. He smacked his lips, scanning the shelves for more.

He quickly realized that, even though he had just drank water,  he was already thirsty _again_ . Good lord. How did Rhys ever survive heats like this before he managed to get his hands on suppressors? Even _with_ meds Jack was convinced this would still be pretty hellish. The sex part seemed great if you had a partner, but the bone-deep fever and intense hunger and thirst was….awful.

His trembling hands knocked the half empty water bottle over onto the counter, swearing as it spilled over the sleek granite, dripping down the cabinets and pooling onto the floor. Jack gasped, slapping wet palms against the countertop as he pressed the flat of his tongue against the rapidly shallowing water, lapping up as much as he could until the counter was more covered in searing, sticky saliva than cool water.

 _Crap. Crap crap crap_.

Jack swore, barely resisting kicking the cabinet as he swung back over in the direction of the fridge, throwing it open with a tense growl. His eyes roved dizzily over the contents he’d already clumsily pawed over. There was a can of strawberry kiwi soda laying on its side. His warm fingers wetted the frosty aluminum as he grabbed the can, nearly teetering backwards as he popped the top and tipped it back. Sharp, bubbling liquid trickled down his throat, thankfully pooling and prickling around in his tight, fevered belly.

He sucked the can dry, crunching it easily in Rhys’ cybernetic fingers as he carelessly tossed it onto his own floor to join the crumpled bag from the pantry.

He tipped his chin back down and belched loudly, the sound far too dainty coming from Rhys’ lips. God, what a little slip. What a fragile little baby omega. Jack would bet that if he punched him he’d disintegrate. If he fucked him he’d shatter.

_Haha, what?_

Jack suddenly moaned, voice squeaking out from within the tightness of Rhys’ throat as a sharp blast of arousal erupted from his groin and up into his stomach, nearly sending his organs tumbling out of his mouth as he fell to the floor, knees hitting the tile with a _crack_. He doubled over, arms clenched around his middle, nearly punching himself in the hip with Rhys’ cumbersome metal fist. He hacked, saliva warm, glutinous, and slightly syrupy with the taste of strawberries as he groped frantically under the hem of the limp fabric of Rhys’ shirt.

The arousal had been simmering inside of Rhys’ body ever since Jack had taken over his subsystems, but now it was slamming into him like a moonshot and hammering into that other base need that Jack had yet to address.

He grabbed stupidly at Rhys’ cock, finally able to pull it free of the shirt, but as soon as a warm rush of satisfaction purred through his body he immediately pulled his hand away as if Rhys’ dick had bit him. He stared down at the stiff, bright red cock peeking out from the butter yellow fabric, starting to bubble precum at the tip.

Jack wasn’t one for moral quandaries. He was more of a shoot first, think about everyone else’s feelings later kind of guy. And his first instinct upon seeing a dick in need of jacking off was to well….jack it off.

But it was _Rhys’_ dick. Sure, he’d seen it before, but _touching_ it seemed like an entirely new boundary that Jack had been convinced he’d never cross because asides from their unnatural cohabitation Jack didn’t really have much of an attachment to the omega at all. That’s something he was super sure of. Nothing romantic, nothing sexual, just _partners_ stuck in the same crap together until those nerdy scientists pulled their heads outta their butts.

Right? _Right_.

Jack stared down at Rhys’ dick, frowning at the way it wobbled with the slightest movement. Pulsing with blood, dripping with precum, not giving him a moment of peace to even think _properly_ about this.

It wasn’t _too_ weird, right? It wasn’t too weird to jerk off with Rhys’ body while Rhys was uh. Indisposed. Like, it was basically masturbating at this point, right? It wasn’t as if Jack had...had a body to do any proper screwing with. So it wasn’t even sex. Not real sex.  Rhys didn’t even know it was happening, for crying out loud! Not being able to remember your first proper screw with Handsome Jack would be a darn shame, so _obviously_ this couldn’t count.

Besides, Rhys could probably get hurt, all things considered. His body and brain, all of it was mixed up right now, jumbled by burning hot hormones. There was no telling what denying needs like this could do to him.

He’d gotten Rhys food and water. This was just...another one of those things.

So he shoved all the qualms out of the way as he sat back on his heels, grabbing Rhys’ cock with the kid’s flesh hand and starting to jerk it off.

It was like a breath of air after teetering on the brink of suffocation. He groaned, chin flopping down against his chest as he watched Rhys’ cock with an air of confused dissociation, wavering between grounded arousal and detached appreciation. He had a….a pretty cute dick...honestly...it was smaller than he remembered his own being, probably? His dick had been huge. Monstrous. Practically ripping people open. But Rhys’ was respectable. For an omega anyway.

And it felt really, really good to touch. It was stiff but velvety against his palm, the tip delicately slick with precum. And rubbing it was making Rhys’ belly flutter and tremble with arousal that quickly wound to the peak until Jack was splashing release against the kid’s belly like glaze on a cake.

He fisted Rhys through two more orgasms before he realized that it wasn’t...really _working_ too well. Like, Rhys was still coming like a racehorse, but the damn arousal wasn’t going _down_ . In fact was it….was it increasing? _Crap_. What was he doing wrong?

Suddenly, he became acutely aware of the gush of warm wetness near the back of Rhys’ underwear, and his concern did a flip-flop.

Rhys….Rhys’ butt was wet. He was slick. That was something Jack understood in the _abstract_ , something he would absorb from reading some boring book or article.

Rhys was slick and needy and he needed _things_ inside of him. Things that Jack...that Jack was gonna have to do. That he was gonna have to _feel_.

Which would be fine and dandy except Jack didn’t _do_ things like this. Not to himself. Maybe once or twice Nisha had gotten particularly frisky and shoved him down on the bed and just—-really brought Lynchwood’s hand of justice down on him. But that had been the only time!

Rhys needed it, though. Rhys was getting really wet and sticky back there and he really needed to do something about it. Jack couldn’t really do much thinking if he didn’t first take care of it.

So he gets down on all fours, levering Rhys’ round, warm ass up into the air as he balanced his weight against his cybernetic arm. He fondled around Rhys’ soft, damp taint, fingers finding Rhys’ hole as it slowly opened up, slick strung between the twitching muscles of his pucker.

Jack teased Rhys’ fingers around his hole, taking a deep, ragged breath through his teeth before pushing two of them inside of himse— _no_ , inside of Rhys, pushing both up to the second knuckle as a desperate, twiney keen slipped from his lips. Sensation suddenly flooded him, knocking into him like a hammer right into his coding and making him stroke out for a moment. A sudden rush of need reached out to him, feeling far too intimate for Jack to be comfortable with even when he’s already starting to finger Rhys. He stopped as his countenance gathered back together, commands to _blink_ delayed to the omega’s eyelids.

God it was _weird_. Rhys’ hole, even loose and slick like this, twitched and clenched around his fingers—whether that was an involuntary reaction or Jack’s own creeping through he couldn’t tell, but it was a bizarre feeling that danced between unsettling and gratifying. Rhys’ hole ached slightly as it stretched out around his fingers, like the tension in the back of the knees while attempting to touch one’s toes. Jack grimaced at the feeling, but Rhys’ body responded as he shoved the fingers deeper inside, his cock stiffening further and pooling precum against the tile between his legs. Jack could see the head nearly brushing up against Rhys’ belly, even with gravity trying to pull it downwards.

This wasn’t good. Not good. Not good at all. The tight warmth inside of Rhys was starting to spread, growing hotter and hotter in its path like a rising sun on the sand, heating the albedo of the omega’s skin. Jack could feel it burning on the edges of his remaining consciousness, trying to melt the barriers between them. Jack gritted his teeth together, trying to resist even as his hand continued to pump in and out of Rhys’ ass, fingers slick and warm as he rubbed the tips against the young man’s shivering, sensitive insides.

Eventually, he could no longer take it. The arm propping up Rhys’ body trembles, and Jack decided to lower him down as carefully as he could muster before he lost it completely and let Rhys drop and break his jaw against the tile. As gently as he could he lied down, sliding Rhys’ clumsy cybernetic hand underneath his own body, groping around for his cock. He kept Rhys’ tattooed chest pressed against the rapidly fogging tile, sliding his knees in until his ass stuck up into the air, giving him more room to jerk off and a better angle to hit the omega’s beleaguered prostate even harder.

He smeared Rhys’ cheek against the tile, nuzzling hopefully as his cybernetic hand fisted and stroked at his cock, warm metallic palm cradling the pulsing shaft.

Rhys’ body came quickly and good lord coming, actually _coming_ hard and completely felt absolutely fantastic, even with the unbearable wave of arousal weighing down on him, the nearly overwhelming sensation of ceaseless need squirming through the poor omega’s form. It was so much more than the little baby orgasms he’d wrung out of Rhys’ body before. Jack’s consciousness nearly shorted out completely when Rhys’ cock twitched and splattered all over the tile below, creamy white dribbling in the cracks of his robotic palm as it clenched around the shaft. Jack humped Rhys’ hips forward and back, rocking between the fingers in his ass and those fixed around his cock as he chased the ever moving horizon of satisfaction that, to his horror, constantly danced beyond his fingertips as more arousal builds in the pit of his belly before Rhys’ cum had even started to dry on the floor.

Eventually, the intense burning inside of him begins to fade, again receding to only his crotch and the back of his head. Jack managed to sit up, grimacing at the little puddles of slick and cum now splattered across his kitchen tile along with the water and garbage from earlier. Rhys’ skin was tacky with sweat, peeling away from the floor as Jack finally managed to push him up onto hands and knees, hanging his head and taking deep, bracing breaths before he finally swayed back into a kneeling position. His body prickled, extremities numb and tingling painfully from the extended period on the floor.

He blinked his way through a mild head rush, lines of grout swimming together briefly before coming back into focus. He reached out, grasping one of the cool cabinet handles. It was nice, grounding, and after a couple moments of deep breathing he slowly pushed his way to his feet.

He dreaded walking back over the too-warm carpet of the bedroom but Rhys deserved to sleep in a nice, comfortable bed after this episode, rather than a solid couch or the floor. Jack’s sight flicked back from his feet to whatever was in front of him as he carefully shuffled back towards the bedroom, feeling exhaustion pulling hard at the body he was occupying. For the first time in forever, _he_ actually felt tired. It wasn’t just secondhand physical exhaustion—whatever control he had over Rhys’ was starting to get burnt out. At least that’s what it _felt_ like.

He managed to crawl all the way to his bed, ignoring the drying sweat still damp in the sheets as he flopped Rhys body down against it. He rolled over onto his back just to be sure. Maybe it wasn’t likely for Rhys to suffocate himself like a stupid baby if he was put face-down, but considering the ordeal he’d just been through he wasn’t about to take any chances.

Rhys’ jaw cracked in a yawn when Jack finally laid his head back, eyelids heavy and burning arousal quieted to enough lowly embers to allow them both to finally slip away into gentle sleep.


	9. Like Normal

Jack had been encouraged by Rhys’ behavior after his heat. The young man had been pretty lethargic for a couple days after the peak of the fever had trailed off, limply masturbating and just barely able to drag himself up to grab his own food and water. Jack gave him his space, something that Rhys took full advantage of. He usually kept himself curled into bed, the blankets wrapped tightly around his body as he if wanted to hide from Jack, despite what the A.I. had already done with body thus far into the heat. There wasn’t much left to Rhys that Jack hadn’t already _seen_ , and yet as the omega gained better control of his faculties and grew a little more aware, he got shyer. Jack even caught him looking over his shoulder at the A.I., eyes a little nervous even as he palmed his cock beneath the sheets.

But, exhausted as he was, Rhys was still mostly able to do things for himself, without Jack having to take over and force him to take care of himself again, much to the A.I.’s relief. Jack couldn’t physically _get_ as tired as Rhys could but the subsystem takeover had left him feeling somewhat drained. He spent the majority of his time floating lazily, occasionally phasing through the wall as he drifted about the room like dust.

Rhys’ lethargy had gradually faded, however, as the omega came out of his heat proper. His eyes were sharper, voice less hoarse with need as he moved about the penthouse with more focus. Four days after the climax of his heat he even managed to cook himself a proper breakfast instead of shoving a protein bar into his mouth or picking through the cold, congealed leftovers from the previous week. Jack was impressed by the omelette Rhys made, stuffed full of spinach and cheese and bell peppers and utterly mouth-watering despite being a little messy. Sure, he could have taken over Rhys’ body to temper the shakiness in his fingers as he handled the pan but he held back, letting Rhys flip the omelette over with only a slight splatter of juice and oil over the plate.

A full belly and a decent shower later, and Rhys finally seemed back to his old self. He emerged from the bathroom, sighing happily as he tugged a towel tighter about his hips, stepping over the sheets and clothes smeared and scattered all over the floor.

“M-man...this place is really a mess…” Rhys mumbled fuzzily as he stumbled towards the closet, rifling through the drawers and tugging a pair of silky blue pajamas out.

“You know we’re gonna have to go back to work eventually, pumpkin…” Jack sighed, looking away briefly as Rhys bluntly dropped his towel to the floor, tugging the pajama bottoms on over his skinny legs.

“Ayup. I know. But not today.” Rhys shrugged on the flowing shirt, before stretching his arms up over his head. Jack heard something crack in his back.

“Heh. You’re gonna run my personal staff ragged. They’re working hard while you laze around here jackin’ off.”

“Then maybe you should hire some more, huh.”

“Working on it, pumpkin. In the meantime I gotta manage with the one who _didn’t_ hightail it or get offed by the guys who’re gunning to replace me.”

Rhys hummed, flopping down on the bed.

“Maybe...once I’m up and runnin’ again….we can hold some interviews. Sure you’d have fun terrifying a few of ‘em. Could be a nice bonding moment for us.”

Jack was pretty sure they’d already spent enough time “bonding,” but…

Well, frightening potential staff was always a trip.

“Sounds sweet, pumpkin. I’ll set up a listing while you take a nap.” Rhys chuckled softly, hugging a pillow to his chest, getting Jack to smile and think of more than just the current situation.

He really hoped things were starting to get better.

* * *

Too bad that hope didn’t last.

Rhys’ decline after the heat hadn’t been immediately apparent until a couple of weeks had past. In fact, for a while, he’d been doing better. He’d seemed more alert, less prone to spells of exhaustion and weakness than he had before his heat. The doctors had noted an improvement in his vitals, the degeneration in his white matter slowing to a near complete halt. Hell, on occasion Rhys was already well into his day before Jack fluttered into consciousness besides him, his body apparently needing less of Jack’s input to get the energy needed to get a start on the morning. It was almost jarring, after months of waking up and spending a few minutes watching Rhys twitch away, to appearing besides the kid as he was brushing his teeth or stepping out of the shower. Sometimes he’d found the omega sitting on the couch, still in his pajamas, with _10001 Planets to Visit Before You Die_ opened on his lap, more pages than before dog-eared by Rhys’ invested fingers.

But all that came to a screeching halt the one morning a rush of panic ran molten through his brain and had both him and Rhys jolting awake in fear and _pain_.

It was Rhys’ pain. Warnings messages and vital signs flashed in the kid’s brain, the feeling insensate to the A.I. but he was not so lucky as to escape the pure anxiety flooding through Rhys’ body—something he hadn’t felt in such magnitude since that red-headed firebitch had screwed him and his destiny. Against all odds he’d come back to recover his future, but the fear sprung from Rhys’ floodgates had him reeling in those ancient helpless feelings as he watched Rhys’ jerk and cry against the sweaty sheets.

“Kiddo. _Kiddo_!”

“Jack—” Rhys gasped, breath blubbering out between his weak lips as he laid limp on his side. His entire form was trembling with unnatural energy, face twitching as if he couldn’t control it.  Jack could feel Rhys’ heart racing, struggling to pump blood through his fragile body, sending jolts of queasy feeling through Jack’s form that made his concern spike through the ozone.

“Crap. Craaaaap. Okay, okay, all right, it’s fine! You hang on there buddy, okay?” Jack snapped through the haze of Rhys’ whining, hands hovering over the young man’s body. His first instinct was to snap into Rhys; subsystems, take over his eye or arm to contact their doctor, but he halted himself—taking a moment to calm himself, to steady his hand before he handled the glass filigree that Rhys’ brain had become.

“Try to relax, pumpkin. I’m gonna play around in your head for just a sec, all right? Won’t be that bad. Promise.” Jack crossed his heart with a slash before he vanished, quickly activated Rhys’ cybernetics. The control was spotty, weak, even as Jack gave it everything that he had.

The little pants and moans of pain coming from Rhys only increased as Jack forced his ECHOeye open, his palm fluttering with weak movements as Jack struggled to bring up the doctor’s number. The numbers seemed to waver and even switch as he tried to focus Rhys’ eye on it, but it slowly dawned on him it was _more_ than just the eye causing problems. _He_ himself was growing sluggish, his programming responding slower even as he sucked more energy from the cybernetics’ CPU. He didn’t know whether to pin the blame on their rising panic or the illness or his own failures as a program, but the exact reason mattered a little less as he managed to finally dial the correct number. The ringing chime flared up the A.I.’s anxiety further, and when the doctor finally picked up, her image flashing in the palm of Rhys’ hand, it took all of Jack’s energy to not screech at her.

Instead, Rhys managed a weak plea, barely more than a cough.

“H-Help.”

* * *

Rhys was hooked up to machines and breathing as shallow as a kiddie pool and Jack couldn’t stand it and as he yelled at the doctor even with his tiny, outwardly insignificant little form he was glad for the flash of fear in her eyes because something inside of him that couldn’t possibly be his _heart_ because he had none was throbbing with worry and fury and he needed it _out_ and fixed.

“You said he was getting better—”

The doctor took a step away from the bed, holding up her tablet as if it was a shield.

“Sir, he _was_ getting better, the degeneration had slowed, perhaps with his heat there was—”

“You _said_ he was getting better! You _said_ it would be fine for him to go through his heat!” Jack snarled, form fragmenting in his anger.

“ _You_ ,” Jack stabbed a finger towards the doctor’s chest, “are a god-damn _liar_ , sugar, and if there’s one thing I hate as much as bandits and traitors, it’s **_liars_ ** **!** ”

Jack’s scream hissed and cracked, his form fizzling anger before snapping out of existence with an electric _pop_ so loud Rhys could smell the air singe. He stared dumbly at his empty palm before trailing up over his forearm, as if he could trace where Jack had gone.

“Jack?” Rhys shuddered. He shook his head, movement jerky. He blinked his eyes rapidly, like a flipbook.

Suddenly, Rhys’ frail body jerked with foreign energy, lunging off of the bed. His legs trembled and gave out as he collapsed on top of the doctor, knocking them both to the floor. The beta cried out in alarm, throwing up her hands as she cried out. Rhys was drooling, saliva dripping down his chin as the unholy force seizing his brain focused all of its strength in his hands as they found the soft hollow of the doctor’s throat and squeezed down _hard_.

“J-Jack, no—”

A harsh, stuttered gurgle filled the room as Rhys’ fingers, both flesh and metal, pressed heavy red bruises into the doctor’s throat, the cybernetic digits digging in hard enough to break the skin and streak blood across the woman’s trembling throat. The sight of blood sends horror and disgust lapping up against Jack’s fury but he holds firm, managing to fight back the infirm whispers of Rhys’ grasping control and push even harder against the doctor’s flesh to the omega’s choking horror.  

Rhys’ weak, red-rimmed eyes swelled with tears. They broke and streamed down his face as the doctor’s body bucked violently upwards, nearly knocking Rhys’ form up and away but his grip was like iron, pressing down like a weighted anchor.

Rhys sobbed brokenly as Jack forced his fingers to clench, ripping one last, choking gurgle from the doctor’s throat before she lay completely still, cool eyes now wide and glassy and bloodshot as they rolled up towards the ceiling. Rhys wailed, snot and tears and drool mixing together as he was finally able to wrench his shaking hands away from the doctor’s throat. He kicked away her corpse, unable to look at the swollen, bloody mess her neck had become as he curled in tight on himself, hands covering his face as he screamed—at Jack, at himself, at _everything_.

His ECHOeye glowed like eerie gold, open unnaturally wide as it stared blankly through the net of his fingers.


	10. At His Disposal

Rhys wasn’t doing well.

Jack had stayed inside the kid’s head, not just because wrenching his code out would probably end up crippling him for good, but also ‘cause he figured….well... _maybe..._ he could still fix this.  

Though it seemed pretty damn unlikely at this point.

Rhys had killed someone. Not just a random bandit or merc but an actual _person_ and that weighed pretty heavily on the kid’s conscious. The kid should have probably expected that considering Jack’s penchant for killing, but the doctor had been different. Rhys had never been forced to look into someone’s eyes as they choked and begged for their life and drew their last breath underneath his palms and whenever Jack had the stomach to look at him in this state he could tell the kid was thinking about it, the scene replaying over and over again before his eyes.

Jack hated how the kid’s eyes seemed to look _through_ him now. Even though he was frikkin’ transparent Rhys had at least paid attention to him beforehand, not stared through his body like he were a trick of the eye.

Rhys’ physical health seemed to come and go in erratic waves. Sometimes, he would be weak as a kitten, confined to Jack’s bed with his arm removed from its socket to lessen the weight on his body as he struggled to sleep. And other times he would be fairly spry, able to go into the office and down to the various departments and do his CEO duties, as long as he didn’t need to do any heavy lifting or relay races.

But even on his good days something remained changed in the kid’s eyes. Jack stayed far away from his subsystems, not sure if he feared what he’d done to Rhys’ psyche, or feared what he might now find hidden away in the darkest depths of the kid’s mental databases.

Rhys mostly busied himself with side projects whenever he was well enough to sit up but not well enough to go into the office proper. Jack felt frustrated, cloistered in his penthouse and utterly dependent on Rhys’ transitory health from day to day. On those days when Rhys was too weak to get out of bed, merely lying there pale and staring at the wall Jack could hardly stand it. Whenever Rhys decided to go near-comatose the hologram flitted out of the room, not wanting to look at the kid if he could help it. He wished he could get Rhys to upload him into the penthouse’s subsystem so he could watch TV or play games or mess around on the ECHOnet or something, but with the current fragility of Rhys’ brain and the new doctor’s heedful but firm recommendation, he was hesitant to risk it just to quell his own boredom.

* * *

One morning, against Jack’s suspicion, Rhys asserted he was well enough to go into the office.

And true, the omega’s legs shook a little less as he walked into the massive room. He was even back to wearing some of his normal clothes, though his shirt was wrinkled and his tie flopping loose.

Rhys was fairly unresponsive to Jack’s needling about _why_ he needed to go into the office, up until the point where he sat in the CEO’s chair, pulled up a keyboard, and asked Jack if he would be all right with uploading himself to Helios’ network.

“It’ll just be for a moment, Jack, c’mon,” Rhys chuckled softly through a yawn, “I may be sick, but I’m not like...made of glass. Just for a second, okay?”

The A.I. hesitated, the warnings from the new doctor bouncing around in his head. Time spent out of Rhys’ head, even with medication, could increase his risk for degenerating further. He didn’t like the idea of getting uploaded into Helios, even if it were only for a moment.

But Rhys was looking at him with an earnest, pleading glance that he hadn’t seen in awhile. And well. The kid _did_ have better days, and so far today he’d behaved pretty all right. So Jack relented with a sigh, allowing Rhys’ to plug the jack into his port and upload the A.I. into Helios’ subsystems.

Despite the freedom afforded to him by the space stations system, Jack felt, nervous, antsy, as he watched Rhys type rapidly on the display on his desk. It was like being stuck in the middle of a wide, open desert, with no coverage and no idea where the next bullet or rakk attack could be coming from next. On top of that he didn’t know what the kid was up to, too wrapped up in his own anxiety up until the point when Rhys suddenly stood up, posture stock still enough to draw Jack’s attention.

“Rhys?”

The omega’s fists clenched visibly, body tense. Jack squinted down at him.

“Kiddo. Hey.” Rhys swayed in place, blinking rapidly. He shook his head, pressing his palm up against his temple. Jack frowned as Rhys spun around slowly, his feet nearly stepping crosswise over each other. When he looked up, the rest of the color in his skin drained all the way into his toes, leaving him a ghostly white. Jack’s heart jumped as Rhys swayed violently back, only stopping himself for a brief moment as he caught onto the table, before his trembling arms too gave way and sent him crashing to the floor.

“ _Rhys!_ ”

Jack’s rolling chair skittered away, crashing into the window with a _bang_ that rippled throughout the A.I.’s entire display. Rhys’ entire body started to jerk before Jack’s horrified eyes, his lips turning blue as his eyes rolled up into his skull.

The winding fear that had been building up inside Jack nearly snapped. Rhys’ saliva fizzed like soda, dripping down the corners of his mouth. It turned pink as Rhys coughed, his entire body jerking with the force. Jack thought he saw something solid come out.

The A.I. was shrieking senselessly, his voice cracked and far more like an alarm than a human’s cry, but as he tried to push out and call for help he found himself blocked on all sides, trapped by the horror of his own limitations as his world shrunk to the undeniable sight of Rhys seizing, bleeding, _dying_ before the panicked program’s very eyes.

And then something snapped, sudden as a bone breaking in two. Jack felt the static clouded his consciousness suddenly vanish, the grainy interference that had been grating against him abating as he blinked, looking down at the floor of his office from the massive screens.

Rhys’  body wasn’t there.

In fact, there was no trace of the struggle the A.I. had been witnessing only seconds before. His chair was properly pushed in, the papers and tablets and picture frame undisturbed atop his desk. There was no blood pooling on the steel floors, no dying chokes seeping through the air, no lifeless eyes staring back up at him.

It looked as it had when they had first walked in, with a notable exception—Rhys was nowhere to be found.

“Rhy—” crap, his voice is trembling, “—Rhysie, kiddo, you in here? You uh….you hiding or something?”

No reply.

Perplexed and shaken, Jack started digging, and the first thing he noticed felt like a punch in his already sorely twisted gut.  

He’d lost nearly two hours.

_What the hell?_

Jack flipped through the rest of the data, scanning through the IDs and timestamps of everyone who had accessed his office within the last couple of hours. He saw when Rhys’ keyed in, then nobody for nearly half an hour, then again Rhys’ signature unlocking the office doors, then nothing until the present.

Jack quickly hacked into the security cameras just outside of his office, rewinding the footage back to the proper timestamp. He let the video play, eyes widening as he watched Rhys walk through the office doors, taking a glance behind him before letting them slide shut.

He froze the video, zooming in on Rhys’ face. The expression of grim determination was not one Jack liked seeing there.

Grim concern built up inside him.

Jack stalked Rhys through the security cameras, flipping from one to another to follow Rhys’ path through Helios. Part of him prayed the kid had headed to his old apartment, of that of his nerdy friend, or maybe even to one of his many favorite cafes in the Hub but Rhys’ purposeful strides spoke of something more chilling than a friendly visit or a grumbling stomach.

Jack watched as Rhys went down, down, further into the bowels of Helios, beyond the office complexes and creature comforts, down around the center of the ship where the barracks of Jack’s army resided. He glared at the screen as the footage showed Rhys walking out into the hangar, making a beeline towards one of the sleeker, newer shuttles—those designed to travel long distances.

He watched as Rhys tapped a couple of codes into the display near the launch bay door, glancing about at the hangar full of Loaders or soldiers unconcerned with the sudden appearance of the CEO. Not interfering out of the presumed threat of Jack—content to let his meatbag steal away into the shuttle, the potentially very last still of Rhys the sight of him standing with his back to the cameras as the shuttle bay door sealed shut behind him.

The hangar’s subsystems confirmed the launch of the shuttle only forty-five minutes ago. Any itinerary had been scrambled into a mess that even Jack’s massive brain couldn’t untangle right now, not with the crushing weight of what Rhys was doing slamming into Jack like an extinction event.

“Frikkin’ idiot!” Jack shouted to the empty office, his fury rebounding off the cold glass.

* * *

Rhys had apparently set up a couple of programs trying to box him in. They weren’t particularly well put together or hardy, but breaking them down was enough to send Jack spiraling further into an anxious tizzy. He _needed_ to figure out a way to follow Rhys wherever he was going, but when he tried to hack into the programmed itinerary

Though he could access the cameras, the programs were blocking him from projecting himself directly into any of the areas he needed to go to. The hangar was off limits entirely, as was programming and security. Trying to project into the executive offices were equally useless, considering the lateness of the evening.

Jack growled, wracking his brain for anything or anyone else that he could access to help him get into the hangar and try to follow Rhys.

And then it hit him.

 


	11. Out of the Blue

Today had been a pretty long day, and Vaughn was ready to relax the rest of the night away.

Things had gotten a little bit lonely with Rhys gone. Honestly, Vaughn had considered looking into getting another room mate just to break up the quiet a little bit, but part of him still clung to the hope that once Jack got his body back, Rhys would want to come back and live together again. Or maybe set them both up in a super cool penthouse? Rhys had offered to upgrade him a few times, and with his new salary he could probably afford nicer digs, but well…

The part of the wall that had chipped away when Rhys had accidentally punched it post cybernetics-surgery was still there, as was most of the stuff in Rhys’ room that Jack either didn’t have space for or didn’t _care_ to make space for. If Vaughn focused and took deep breaths, he could still just barely pick up on the lingering notes of Rhys’ scent.

The space felt well-lived in, even if one of its former inhabitants were gone.

Vaughn took a shower, trying not to fuss about how long his hair was starting to get and how he should probably make an appointment to get it cut. His stomach gurgled softly as he finished trimming his beard, clearly craving the leftover Truxican food sitting in the fridge. But first things first.

He usually went to the gym after getting off work, but today he’d just wanted to get right home. So he trudged back to his bedroom and grabbed the twenty pound weights nudged between his bed and the wall and started running through his basic routine. He took pride in his physique. Ever since they’d returned from Pandora, he’d been imbued with a new sense of confidence, evolving from running on the treadmill to lifting weights. He was getting to be bulkier than some of the alpha regulars at his gym, even.

The beta was in the middle of squatting with the weight-filled fists nearly resting on his shoulder, when something bright and blue suddenly flashed before his eyes, causing him to lose his balance as well as his grip.

“ _Crap_ !” Vaughn shouted as he stumbled back, the weights flying from his hands and landing with a _thump_ on the ground, thankfully away from anything fragile or precarious—not that Vaughn noticed. He was far too busy staring at the hologram that had suddenly manifested right in the middle of his bedroom.

“Oh. Oh _wow_.” Jack stared straight at Vaughn’s naked torso. “Uh, did I interrupt something here, muscles?”

“ _Uh_ , well, kind of **_yeah_**?” Vaughn practically shrieked, hands roving over his chest in a futile attempt to hide himself from the CEO’s sudden appearance. Jack scoffed.

“Don’t bother, you don’t have anything I haven’t seen before. Several times. On Pandora. Remember when you peed on your shirt?”

“I—I did _not_!” Vaughn protested, grabbing his T-shirt from the bed and hugging it over his chest.

“Heh. Yeah. _Sure_. What happens on Pandora stays on Pandora, right?”

“W-Will you stop?” Vaughn hunched in on himself, looking Jack nervously up and down. “Why are you even here?”

“Huh? Oh yeah, _right_ ,” Jack snickered, before he forced himself to be serious. He straightened up, striding over close to Vaughn and projecting himself a hair bigger over the already short man.

“I didn’t just jump in here to mess with ya about your piss kink or your weird body or whatever, I need ya cause Rhysie went and ditched me, jumped ship and headed off who-the-hell knows where, and I ain’t about to let him get away from me that easy when he’s been— _anyway_ —”

“Rhys…wait, Rhys is missing?” Vaughn exclaimed, fearful. “What the hell happened to him?”

“Search me, kiddo. All I know is he ditched me in Helios’ subsystems and zoomed out of here in the transport. Saw it _all_ on tape,” he spat. Vaughn’s body suddenly trembled with nervous energy, running his hands through his hair.

“But he’s...he’s _sick_ , he’s not doing well, oh no, oh no no _no_ —”

“H-Hey, hey! Don’t freak out on me here, muscles.” Jack waved his hands through Vaughn’s shoulder in an ineffective attempt to get him to snap out of it.

Vaughn turned in an anxious circle before abruptly sitting down on the bed. His fingers rubbed into his temples, as if trying to massage his brain into action rather than needless panic.

“ _Oohhh_ , no, what am I gonna do, where is he going? Oh god, we don’t even know where he’s _going_ —”

“Well, that’s what I’m bugging you for,” Jack sat on the bed next to him, his butt clipping through the comforters, “he screwed with my access to like, the part of Helios I need to go in order to get after him. That’s where you come in, muscles.”

“H-How? I mean, I might know a bit about computers and programming and such, but not as much as Rhys, I don’t know if I could dismantle anything he set up—”

“Well, good thing I don’t think I’m gonna need you to do any hardcore hacking,” Jack scoffed. “I already know you probably can’t hold a candle to Rhysie with that stuff.” Vaughn’s expression soured.

“J-Jeez, you’d think if you needed my help so bad you wouldn’t be making fun of me—”

“Listen, muscles, if you don’t help me out, I’m gonna hack into your bank account and divvy it out amongst the Internal Auditing guys, ‘kay?”

“No! Those guys suck!” Vaughn exclaimed, holding up his hands as the A.I. advanced angrily upon him, mind clearly racing behind those tinted glasses.

“Then I guess you better help me unless you wanna see your hard earned cash spent on clipboards and calculators!” Jack growled, waggling an angry finger right through Vaughn’s nose.

The smaller man sighed, running his hands open through his hair.

“Okay….okay. What do you need for me to do?”

“If I’m gonna go after him, I’ll need a _body_.” Jack hummed, stroking his chin. Vaughn cringed, taking a small step back.

“Not _your_ body, muscles, no offense but even if I _wanted_ to downgrade, I can’t,” Jack tapped his head, “you don’t got the right kind of hardware in there.”

“Thank god.” Vaughn shuddered. “I don’t know if I could uh….go through with that…”

“You and me both, kiddo. But just ‘cause you’re not a cyborg doesn’t mean you’re off the hook! No one’s going looking for Rhys until I have someone or….some _thing_ to put myself into.” Jack paced, eyebrows furrowed in thought. Vaughn glanced about his bedroom, his eyes falling on something small and flat nudged up against the corner. Jack peered curiously as Vaughn trudged over to it, pulling a discarded pair of pants off of it and tossing it towards the bed.

It was a dinky little cleaning roomba, like the ones he had roaming his own office, but _much_ less high tech. This one was at least a couple models past. Vaughn bent over, picking it up and dragging it back over to where Jack was standing.

“How about this little guy? He has a jack that I’m pretty sure you could download yourself into….I think it has a screen too, it usually just projects cleaning tasks but um….you could probably figure it out….what?” Vaughn faltered at the look of disgust on Jack’s face.

“You want me... _me_ , Handsome Jack, to get into _that thing_?” He pointed at the roomba as if it were a particularly disgusting alien species.

“...What’s wrong with it?”

“What’s wrong with it? Okay, muscles, take a look at _me_ and then take a look at that thing.”

Jack struck a cool pose as Vaughn did so.

“Uh….I’m still not exactly…”

Jack deflated, throwing up his hands.

“It’s a piece of _junk_. Seriously, you’re in dire need of an upgrade.”

“Hey, it’s not _that_ bad. It still works fine! And I can wirelessly connect to it…” Vaughn tapped the frame of his glasses to demonstrate. The lens lit up in tandem with the bulky roomba’s display, the little robot chiming melodically in response.

“Yeah, cute trick, but there’s no way I’m gonna shack up in that thing, but…” Jack flitted closer, taking a look at Vaughn’s glasses. They were still pretty boxy and dorky, but it was far less humiliating than the piece of crud now twittering around on the floor in search of dust.

Vaughn wilted, subconsciously touching his frames.

“Wh….why are you looking at me like that…?”

“Those specs hook up to Helios’ network, kiddo?” Jack tapped his shimmering finger against Vaughn’s glasses, causing their lens’ to glitch out. Vaughn flinched, instinctively lashing out through Jack’s body.

“H-Hey, quit it…”

“Answer the question. Tick-tock, tick-tock.”

“Um, yeah, they do...it’s like a kind of basic ECHO built in.”

“Fancy. You not have the balls to get all the fancy stuff Rhysie got?”

“Hah. Why get it shoved into my skull when I can just wear it and avoid all the physical therapy?” Vaughn joked weakly.

“Well, it’ll do for now. All right, princess, go ahead and jack me in.”

“W-wait, you want to go….go _in_ my glasses?”

“I mean, _yeah_ , we gotta go after Rhysie and I need to hijack someone else’s body to get around all the crappy restriction he put on me.”

“I….I guess if there’s no other option…. _oh man_ …” Vaughn sighed, his glasses lighting up with various displays as he connected to the main Helios network. Jack waited until he felt a small path open up, his form flickering and disappearing sharply as he transferred himself into Vaughn’s glasses.

The change was immediate and aggravating. He felt….uncomfortably flat and _small_ , much smaller than he had any right to be but it’d have to do for the time being. At least he was a little more mobile now.

“Right, now that that’s taken care of, I’m gonna need you to get down to the hangar bay. Should be able to get access to the executive transport. Even on a rescue mission, we should ride in _style_.”

“R-Right now?” Vaughn spluttered, eyelids still involuntarily winking as he tried to get used to the neon projection of Jack on his glasses.

“ _Yes_ , right now muscles, you really wanna wait about while Rhys is running around in space doing who the heck knows what?”

“You’re right…” Vaughn sighed, running his hand through his hair. “Lemme just...okay...lemme grab a couple of things.”

He grabbed a small, empty duffle bag from beside the bed and set about the room, grabbing a boxy taser from the nightstand, his glasses case, an extra pair of shoes—

“Muscles, we’re not going on a frikkin’ camping trip,” Jack interjected as Vaughn grabbed for a bright yellow fleece blanket. The beta froze, looking sheepishly down at the item in his hands.

“I...Rhys left it when he went to live...um...up at the penthouse. He might need it?”

“Pumpkin, that’s the du—”

“ _Look_ , stop calling me stupid, okay?” Vaughn shivered, fists tightening in the blanket. Jack quieted, narrowing his eyes as Vaughn bit his lip.

“I’m helping you out, I’m trying to help _Rhys_ , so stop making fun of me.”

A long silence stretched out between them. Vaughn shifted awkwardly on his feet, gaze wavering as he tried to meet Jack’s eye, something made easier by the fact that Jack was about an inch from his face. Finally, the A.I. sighed, dropping his hands to his side.

“All right, all right, I’ll play nice. Can we get going now, kiddo?”

Vaughn nodded softly, shoving the blanket into the bag and zipping it up.

“Let’s go.”

* * *

Jack jostled up and down, Vaughn’s glasses bouncing against his nose and he jogged through the huge, automatic doors leading towards the transport hangar. It was mostly empty, with little more than a couple of Loaders stacking crates of goods to be shipped out.

“It was transport 11A. On the right,” Jack directed, trying to point as best as he could with the limits of a two-dimensional plane. Vaughn got the message, quickly striding over to the empty transport bay. With Jack’s help, the accountant quickly keyed in the override code to view recent activity.

When the departed transport’s itinerary showed up, Jack felt his metaphorical stomach sink.

“Nyx…?” Vaughn questioned, furrowing his brow. “Why….why would Rhys want to go there?”

“Oh crap, _crap_ ,” Jack groaned, slapping his forehead with his palm and making Vaughn jump.

“What, what? What does that mean?”

“It means….it means Rhys is gonna be a total _idiot_ about things and we gotta get after him,” Jack snapped, gesturing wildly towards the far end of the hangar. “Get to Bay 1HJ. We’re gonna take the executive transport, it’s faster than any of these junk heaps.”

Vaughn took off, his little legs pumping, glasses sliding even further down his nose as he finally skidded to a halt in front of a huge bay, entrance ringed in bright gold and white. A replication of Jack’s own mask was slapped at the top, empty eyes looking down at anyone walking up the loading ramp.

Another password fed by Jack, and the executive transport bay opened with a _hiss._

It had been a good long time since Jack had properly set foot inside of his executive transport, and he didn’t want to particularly think about the last memory he’d had of the sleek flooring, plush seats, and numerous amenities designed for trips both long and short.

He guided Vaughn through the proper launch and destination codes, and before long the transport whirred and trembled, detaching from the dock as it was projected out of the hangar and into space. Vaughn paled considerably at the launch, buckling himself into one of the plush chairs as the transport shook in the last throes of initial takeoff, before stabilizing. Jack snorted as Vaughn burped out a moan.

“Don’t vomit, muscles, I won’t have you mucking up _my_ executive transport,” Jack growled, glaring back at the beta as he scrunched his eyes tight. Well, whatever it took to prevent the guy from getting too queasy.

Jack flickered back to the exterior side of Vaughn’s glasses, watching as Helios—purple and glowing—grew smaller and smaller in the transport’s rear window. It hit him just how long it’d been since he’d been properly off of the space station—and how much he already wanted to go back.

But the constant blip on the main display of the transport steeled his resolve.

Luckily for Jack, every piece of Hyperion cybernetics were embedded with long range tracking chips for safekeeping.

It wasn’t the first time he’d been grateful his meat-suit was half robot. Once on planet, he’d be able to home in on Rhys’ position with far more accuracy. At least, that’s what he was betting on.

And he sure as hell had a _lot_ to lose if he was wrong.


	12. Into the Roomba

The trip to Nyx was far too long, even with the speed of the executive transport. Jack hated that he couldn’t even deal with his nerves by _pacing_ , considering he was currently trapped in the two-dimensional planes of Vaughn’s glasses. He walked back and forth between each lens, frustrated at the lack of access as the time ticked on with agonizing slowness.

“Can you um….stop...maybe?” Vaughn groaned, eyebrows crunching. “You’re um...kind of giving me a headache.”

“Ugh, what am I _supposed_ to do? This is taking way too long!” Jack shouted, throwing his arms over his chest. Vaughn winched at the sharp sound, eyes squeezing shut.

“It won’t be _that_ much longer. Come on. I’m…” Vaughn frowned. “I’m just as worried about him as you are... _apparently_ …”

“Hey, you bum around in a guy’s head for a few months, you tend to get attached to him.”

“Yeah, you were super lucky he’s basically crazy about you.”

“ _Everyone_ is crazy about me, muscles.”

“....I guess. But I’m pretty sure Rhys’ trumps them all…” Vaughn chuckled softly, pushing his glasses up to rub at the bridge of his nose.

“You think he’s okay?”

Jack turned away from Vaughn’s wide eyes, looking towards the wide windows of the transport. In the distance, growing closer, he could see the large, intimidating shadow of a planet silhouetted by a distant sun.

“I’m sure he is.”

* * *

The programmed itinerary lead them through the shimmery heat of Nyx’s atmosphere, their transport streaking like a meteoroid across the planet’s sky. Vaughn groaned, clenching his fingers into the arms of the chair as they descended, the hovering thrusters activated as soon as they grew close enough to the ground. Once they plateaued at a cruising altitude Jack needled Vaughn into unbuckling his seatbelt and getting up to look out of the window onto the terrain below as their transport grew closer and closer to where Rhys’ own vessel had landed.

“Crap…” Jack growled, slapping his fist against Vaughn’s glasses as the other transport came into view. Smoke curled up from the vessel, now crashed between two large prongs of stone. Vaughn let out a groan at the sight as their transport hovered to a halt, before landing smoothly next to the wreck.

“C-C’mon, muscles, let’s not panic here—” Jack chastised as Vaughn started to pace about the transport, cupping his head in his hands. He brought up data on Rhys’ tracer, taking a glance at the window to the wreck next to him.

“I’ve got a trace on the kid’s cybernetics and it...it looks like he’s a little further, he might not even be _in_ that wreck!”

“Or his arm and brain got blown off and scattered around…” Vaughn groaned, dragging his hand down his face. His eyes were wide and red-rimmed, fingers shaking. Jack tensed, a small hiss whistling between his teeth.

“Don’t you get all doom and gloom on me _now_ , kiddo, not when we’ve come this far,” he snarled, wishing he could shake the beta out of his worries. Jack was worried too, but _jeez_ , he knew they needed to get to Rhys and not waste time worrying about whether he was already—

“Okay, okay, I’m fine, y-you’re right, maybe he’s….maybe he’s okay…” Vaughn’s voice wavered, eyes moist as he dragged a hand across his nose, snuffling deeply. Jack cringed at the snotty noise.

“I don’t deal in maybes, muscles. Kid’s gonna be fine. _Trust me_.” Despite being the last thing most people would wanna hear from Handsome Jack, Vaughn managed to calm down slightly, at least enough to regain his bearings and think clearly.

“Okay….okay so I guess I should just...follow where you tell me to go?”

“Nah, no dice, kiddo, that ain’t gonna happen.”

“W-What? What do you mean? Didn’t you bring me all this way because you need my help.”

“Well, _yeah_ , but blame Rhysie here, he’s the one who picked a planet without enough oxygen to sustain human life.” Jack looked grimly out of the window towards the inhospitable landscape.

“So, what do we do _now_?”

“Start digging around here, kiddo, for some life support systems or OZ kits or _something_ so that we can get on out there.”

Vaughn started scuttling about the transport, looking under the fancy seats and in the overhead compartments, before trying the small, closet-like door near the back of the transport. Inside, they found an emergency transmitter, floatation devices, a fire extinguisher and other emergency supplies, as well as a fancy cleaning roomba and—thankfully—an OZ kit.

Not so thankfully, it was empty.

“Why….why have an oxygen kit in an emergency closet if it’s not even full?” Vaughn cried shrilly, shaking the device in annoyance. Jack smacked his forehead.

“....Crap, think I may have drained it to pass the time on one of those boring summit trips…” Vaughn balked at him.

“You got _high_ on the emergency oxygen…”

“Well I’ll tell ya it _really_ helped pass the time,” Jack chuckled grimly, tapping his chin as he thought. His eyes fell upon the cleaning roomba lying dormant near the bottom of the closet, an idea snapping into his head.

“Hey, muscles, ‘member when you were trying to get me into that hunk of junk back at your place…?” Vaughn’s eyes followed Jack’s fingers down.

“I….you’re not serious... _this_ one is okay, but mine wasn’t?”

“Well _yeah_ , ‘cause this is a state of the art model, not you’re dinky little robo-maid.” Jack snorted, as if the distinction was obvious. “With this one, I can ride in _style_.”

“Because _style_ is the most important thing when it comes to a rescue mission, sure!”

“Will you stop whining and upload me into that thing so I can go solo out there?” Jack hissed, gesturing furiously at the roomba.

“Solo? W-Wait, hold on—”

“There’s no time to hold on, pipsqueak! If I wait around for you to find a way fill an OZ kit Rhys might already be dead!” Jack growled, flashing dangerously in Vaughn’s lens.

“Now _plug me in that thing_.”

Vaughn wavered for just a moment more, mind stuttering around the use of the “D” word, before squatting to crouch next to the roomba, tapping the side of his glasses. Jack felt his form fizzle as Vaughn connected wirelessly to the little robot, swiftly downloading the A.I.

Jack managed to flex a little bit, the processors inside of the roomba much more powerful than those inside of Vaughn’s glasses. Still more claustrophobic than Helios, or even Rhys’ brain, but for once he didn’t have time for luxury. He took a moment to adjust to his sudden change in host, the little wheels of the roomba whirring as he moved back and forth and turned around in a testing circle. The display screen atop the small robot glitched violently before it fizzled away to black. Sparks of blue flickered for a second, before a tiny projection of the A.I. blipped into view. Though he had a little more room to stretch out in this thing, it was hardly any more homey than the glasses had been.

Jack looked up.

“Enjoy this, muscles, ‘cause this’ll be the only time you’re ever taller than me,” Jack couldn’t resist teasing. Vaughn merely set his face in a nervous frown, arms crossed over his chest.

“Just….go find Rhys, okay? I’ll try….try to find a way to refill the kit.”

“Yeah. Sure thing. Hey, stiff upper lip, kiddo.” Jack wagged his finger in Vaughn’s direction.

“Don’t forget, _I’m_ Rhysie’s hero. There’s no way I won’t save him.”

* * *

He was completely immune to the feeling of cold, though the feedback from the roomba’s sensors quickly told him just how chilly it was. Not to mention the lack of oxygen.

Despite the inhospitable environment and his current hurry and panic, Jack had to admit that there was a kind of bizarre beauty about Nyx that the pictures in his book back home couldn’t encompass. The static splashes of color in the coal-dark sky were nothing compared to the flashing aurora that shimmered and shone above. Bright red splotches gathered like clouds before shooting violently downwards. Deep, soulful blue sprayed up like a reversed waterfall.

It was….earnestly beautiful, in a way that Jack hadn’t felt since he’d first set foot on Helios all those years ago and taken a glance into the far off, blooming recesses of space.

They’d landed not far from where the chip had traced Rhys to. Vaughn had uploaded the tracking signature to the roomba when he had transferred Jack, allowing the A.I. to continue zeroing in on its—and hopefully Rhys’—location. It hadn’t moved since they’d landed, something that both relieved and worried the A.I. A static location meant it’d be easier to find. But it could also mean that Rhys had figured out a way to ditch the chip and flee to another area of the planet, far from where Jack’s little roomba treads could reach.

Or it meant that he was already…

 _No_. Jack had already promised to Rhys’ little wiener friend that he’d save him. Duh. He was the hero. Rhys was alive and well and Jack was gonna rescue him and take him back to Helios, no matter what Rhys had to say about it.

The pinging of the tracking device on the minimap Jack had accessed drew closer and closer, the signal stronger than ever as Jack pushed the roomba up a large hill of rocky black terrain. The brand new treads and anti-gravity propulsion helped him negotiate the unstable incline without the proper use of hands or feet, the robot pushing valiantly forward as he managed to crest the hill and look down in the small, shallow valley below. Pockets of oxygen vents floated upwards, white-blue light glowing from cracks in the earth to mirror the auroras shooting in the sky above.

He surveyed the valley below, the roomba’s rudimentary scan providing him with some insight into the composition of both the vents and soil, as well as a bio-reading on a couple slow moving, tiny reptilian creatures winding through the sand. He squinted at the tracer, trying to orient his body in its direction. As he turned towards the right side of the valley, facing a billowing vent, his scan lit up, zeroing in on what looked like a pair of legs—capped with a very recognizable pair of shoes.

 _Crap_ . Jack swore with a muted hiss as his treads whirred, spinning as fast as they could against the ground as he raced towards Rhys. He couldn’t tell from this far away whether the young man was still breathing or not, but all he knew was that he had to get to him and _quick_.

The obsidian rocks practically crumbled underneath his treads as he powered down the slope, losing traction and sliding the last couple of meters. He growled as dust floated up into the air, obscuring his vision as he still pushed forward. He slipped onto the valley floor, treads grinding as he pushed the roomba’s speed to its limits, zooming towards Rhys’ prone body.

As he got close enough he could see long, black things covering the omega. A quick scan confirmed they were the same as the lizard-like creatures he’d seen fluttering through the rest of the valley, except these guys weren’t content to sluggishly meandering from air vent to air vent, nah—they were _biting_ him, pulling at bits of his clothing. One had even coiled around his shoe, peeping in frustration as it gnawed at the heel and tried to get it off.

“Hey! Get offa him, you punks!” Jack shouted, voice garbled through the roomba’s audio. A small slot opened in the sloped front of the machine, a stiff metal arm snaking out. Jack batted at the small creatures, sending a couple flying away as they rest hissed and squeaked and fled from where they had been biting at Rhys’ body. Jack rolled over one he’d stunned angrily, feeling it whine and wriggle in pain as he pressed forward.

Rhys was facing away from him, his arm resting limply over his side. He had a rusty, old OZ kit over his exposed shoulder, but whatever mask of protection it’d given him was melting like frosted iced over his face. The alpha couldn’t tell if he was breathing.

“Rhys!” Jack called, pushing up the volume on the roomba as far as it could go, “hey, _Rhys_!”

The omega didn’t move.

Panic seized Jack as he scanned Rhys for signs of life but even with this roomba’s advanced model he couldn’t analyze much—it just wasn’t made for this. Jack’s mind raced, sorting through his different options as the plume of oxygen billowed above, disappearing up into the stars.

There were only a couple of feet left between where Rhys was lying and where the air was blossoming out of the ground. Jack gritted his digital teeth, revving up the roomba as he shot forward.

“C’mon, kiddo, don’t do this!” Jack cried as he rammed the roomba into Rhys’ side, the sloped front digging underneath the young man’s body. The A.I. pushed the machinery he inhabited as far as it could go, treads grinding against the rocky earth as he tried to roll Rhys’ over.

“ _Aghhhh!_ Come on, come on, come on!” Jack shouted, pushing ceaselessly into Rhys’ side. The young man’s limp body rolled slowly through the obsidian dirt, dust clinging onto the too-pale skin that Jack was trying valiantly to ignore as he nudged the omega closer and closer towards the blooming air vent. He pushed forward, even when his treads spun uselessly, failing to gain traction against the omega’s greater weight.

Jack had full control of this little thing, able to override every bit of coding and bend it to his will, and yet he _still_ felt so helpless.

He snarled as he pushed the roomba’s machinery to its very limit, alarms and warnings blaring in front of him before he finally managed to roll Rhys around and around until the omega’s body came to a halt inside of the plume of oxygen, sheathing Rhys like a ghostly shroud.

Jack could see his face, now, paler than he had ever seen it, surrounded by the mists of life-giving air that he just needed to _take_ , and then everything would be all right and Jack could fix this, Jack could be the hero Rhys needed. He could save him.

All Rhys needed to do was breath.


	13. Under the Aurora

Rhys’ body jerked, his lungs involuntarily expanding as he took a deep, rasping gasp of air that practically slapped Jack right in his virtual face. 

He trembled like a live wire, his flesh hand digging into the front of his shirt as he heaved painful, full body breaths. His eyes fluttered open, the brown iris dazed even as his ECHO fluttered and illuminated back up. His OZ kit hummed, replenished with the sudden rush of oxygen as it resealed around his face, sheathing him in lively blue. 

The omega coughed roughly, managing to prop himself up on one elbow as he turned to the side, blinking rapidly at the sight of the roomba with Handsome Jack’s face flickering sternly on the display screen. Rhys’ brow furrowed, nose scrunching up.

“I….I gotta be  _ dead _ …”

“Yeah, you  _ wish _ , pumpkin,” Jack snarled, pressing forward until his entire, angry face took up most of the display screen. “What kind of frikkin’  _ idiot _ are you?”

“Y-Yeah, nope, definitely not a dream if you’re yelling at me in a non-sexy way…” Rhys groaned weakly, sliding back down onto the ground. Despite the oxygen now flooding his lungs, he still looked pale, tired. Worse than he had when he’d last seen him. And Jack had last seen him as a dead hologram on his office floor. 

“You didn’t answer me. I  _ said _ , what kind of frikkin’ dumbass idiot  _ fuck _ are you?”

Rhys flinched, trying to turn away from the roomba, which only made Jack angrier. He scooted forward, jabbing the front of his chassis into Rhys’ elbow. The omega yelped, jerking his arm away and fixing Jack with a bitter look. 

“Don’t you gimme that, sugar. You were gonna  _ die _ and you didn’t even think about leaving the guy who frikkin’  _ made _ you what you are today a god-damn  _ note _ or something like that? Jeez, sorry about this Jack, but I’m just gonna run off and kill myself without ever letting you know?”

“ _ Made me _ …” Rhys snorted. “You...you really think you  _ helped _ me, don’t you? You...made me into something I’m  _ not _ , something I don’t even….if it weren’t for you, I wouldn’t  _ be _ here, I wouldn’t be wanting to…”

“Oh no, don’t you blame your misery on  _ me _ , cupcake, did you forget how many millions of dollars I’ve poured into trying to  _ help _ you?”   


“ _ Yeah _ , well, it didn’t work, did it?” Rhys snarled, propping himself up as he glared down at the roomba. Jack’s expression flashed furiously on the monitor as he rolled closer, until the machine’s arm was pointed threateningly at the omega’s chest.

“So what, should I have just let you die?” Jack roared.

“ _ Maybe! _ ” Rhys cried back, voice breaking. 

Jack stilled, arm fixed accusingly at Rhys, his eyebrows slanted furiously as he studied the omega’s face.

“Is this about the broad you... _ I  _ killed _. _ ”

Rhys looked away. 

“I...It’s not….it’s not  _ just _ that…” 

“Cause a little killing is kind of in the CEO handbook. You know how many people I’ve killed?” Rhys barely heard him, his head shaking heavily from side to side.  

“You don’t...it’s...she was  _ dead _ . Dead. Just like that. And it seemed so easy, just...I don’t know…” The emptiness in Rhys’ voice sent chills through Jack’s metaphorical spine.

“Screw you, kiddo, you really think your life doesn’t matter? You really think it’s not worth trying?” Jack spat, anger rising at the hollow look in Rhys’ eyes, the limp way the omega laid against the vent. The way his chest rose and fell as if his body was forcing it too, his lips only barely willing to take in air. 

“I’m just….I’m  _ tired _ , Jack. I got tired of fighting long before  _ you _ did and I just wanted to sleep and feel better without meds or machines or  _ something _ , you just...you don’t  _ get _ it.”

The tiny metal arm of the roomba suddenly jerked out, grabbing Rhys’ chin in its little grasp. The omega squeaked, eyes widening as Jack jerked his face down so Rhys would have no option but to meet his angry glance. 

“I’ve  _ tried _ death, sugar, and believe me, you aren’t missing out on much.” 

Rhys’ eyes fell, his fingers digging a little into the soft sand. He bit his lip, a deep breath swelling through his torso. 

“I just….wanted to…”

“You bothered to bring an OZ kit, pumpkin. And don’t tell me you’re not smart enough to realize there’s a Hyperion tracer on your tech,” Jack stated. Rhys shut his eyes tight, breath coming out in a half sob. 

“I...you know me...you’ve seen everything in here…” Rhys weakly tapped his temple. “Thought….maybe you might come, figured it was just...a stupid fantasy. I know what you really think. I’m just your meatsuit and you’re just...just my  _ battery _ .”

“Hey, Handsome-frikkin’-Jack is  _ more _ than just a battery!” Jack snarled. Rhys just looked blankly at him, sniffling. 

Silence stretched out between them, interrupting only by the occasional scuffle of curious fauna. The auroras strobed above them, yellow interlocking with blue. The soil beneath Rhys’ chin grew damp, sparkling in the glow of the vent. 

“Rhys.”

The omega looked up, eyes bright. Jack’s face was soft, anger wiped from his features. The look in his eyes was earnest, even as his lips fought an internal battle. 

“I….I’ve only been on two before.”

Rhys tried blinking away the tears clinging to his lashes. 

“What...are you talking about?”

Jack sighed, his shoulders falling. 

“I mean….just...well, if you don’t count Elpis this is….this is only the third planet I’ve been on.”

Rhys furrowed his brow down at him. 

“W...What? But I thought you said…”

“I lied, pumpkin. I’d only been on two. Frikkin’ two!” Jack held up his fingers for emphasis. 

“Two planets, just like your lame ass.” The A.I. snorted. “Guess that makes this like….’our planet’ now.”

“Pretty sure Nyx is still unclaimed…”

“You…” Jack stammered, “you know what I  _ mean _ .”

Rhys chuckled hoarsely, smearing a hand across his eyes. He brought his legs up towards his body, intimately curling around the roomba as he laid his other hand atop it. 

“Kid, I know, I  _ know _ this hasn’t been exactly the easy-street high-life I told ya it would be if you ruled Hyperion with me, I get that. But you can’t just...just throw in the towel now.  _ Please _ .”

Few men had heard Jack use the P-word, un-sarcastically, and live. Rhys was just that special.

Jack’s hand reached out, limited by the dimensions of the display, the hologram’s bright blue reflected in Rhys’ watery eyes. 

“Come back with me, kiddo. Please. You’re really….more than just a meatbag and I just want...I wanna  _ do _ things with you. Lemme...lemme have a chance to take you to all those planets.  _ Together _ .”

Words didn’t pass Rhys’ chapped lips, just beginning to regain their rosy color, but he lifted his hand and pressed the flesh palm against the display, his smile, tired as it was, sending the A.I.’s circuits aflutter. 

“Rhys!” Came a shout from up the incline. Rhys drew back his hand, shakily lifting his head as Vaughn jogged down the embankment towards the vent. His breath huffed up against the pearly mask of the oxygen kit, as he ran towards them. Jack whirred a little closer to Rhys as Vaughn thudded to a halt, gasping as he dropped to his knees beside the downed omega. 

“Holy shit, you’re alive, Rhys I was  _ so  _ worried,” Vaughn wrapped him up in a hug, yelping and twitching when Jack dug the tip of his metal arm into his thigh.

“He nearly suffocated and got eaten by lizards, muscles, ease up on the bear hugs ‘kay?” Jack said sourly as Vaughn awkwardly pulled away. Rhys gave a raspy chuckle, his head falling forward against his best friend’s chest as Vaughn held him a little softer. 

“He’s just pissed he won’t be the one to carry me back to the ship…” The omega smirked softly down at the roomba as Vaughn pulled a blanket out of his bag, wrapping him up. The hologram snorted, turning pointedly away from Rhys. 

Jack was  _ not _ pissed. Not at all. But that didn’t stop him from fantasizing about how much he was gonna carry Rhys when he finally got his new body the entire walk back to the transport.   
  



	14. Up in the (Lack of) Air

When Rhys got back to Helios, almost all he wanted to do was rest

Jack didn’t try to fight him, didn’t want to force the omega to do anything he didn’t want to. It left him uneasy, but with the omega still fragile from the fiasco on Nyx, he dared not try to jostle him too much, for fear he might again break. 

Not long after their return, Vaughn moved in with them. Jack’s initial instinct was to rally against it, but he saw how closely Rhys clung to someone physical, the way he craved intimacy with the beta, the way it battled against the weariness in his eyes—so he’d agreed to let Vaughn sleep on their couch and keep an eye on Rhys. 

A slight pang of jealousy curled in Jack’s stomach whenever he saw them together, but he kept it tame—if only for the omega’s sake. 

* * *

Rhys was bundled up on the couch, Jack’s yellow comforters wrapped tightly about his body. The A.I. sat next to him, Rhys’ head tilted to the side, resting without purchase against Jack’s shoulder. Rhys stared in silence at the television before him, making an occasional grunt or hum at either the program or the slight movements Jack made.

“Oh man, Galaxy Gammas Police Squad? We haven’t watched this in  _ ages _ ,” Vaughn remarked as he entered from the kitchen, carefully holding a steaming bowl of soup and a glass of orange juice in each hand. Rhys smiled softly, sitting up at the sight of his friend. Jack subtly turned up the volume of the television, but said nothing as Vaughn sat on the other side of the omega. 

The first few days after the beta had moved in had been rough, considering Jack was mostly invisible to half the people now living in his house. Jack hadn’t minded at first, thinking it funny he could mess around with Vaughn without the shrimp noticing, but even he had to admit it’d be more convenient if the beta actually knew where he was and could  _ talk _ to him like they had before. So after some careful tweaking, Rhys linked his own personal network with Vaughn’s glasses, allowing them both to see what Jack was up to while keeping him hooked into Rhys’ brain. 

Even though they  _ could _ talk now, all three watched the show in relative silence for awhile, Vaughn occasionally commenting on a character or bit of dialogue, with Rhys returning his enthusiasm with a soft grunt. They continued in this muted fashion until Rhys’ hands started trembling and Vaughn had to go grab his medication. Jack sat by the young omega’s side, his hand fluttering not-at-all uselessly against the omega’s shoulder as Vaughn returned, encouraging him to drink it with his juice. 

“You know, it’s weird to think we went from like…” The beta sat besides Rhys, rubbing the omega’s back as he managed to choke down the pills and orange juice. “Sticking Jack into your head at the World of Curiosities to like. Sitting with him on his couch, watching bad television.”

Jack hummed at the small talk. Rhys coughed a little. Vaughn continued. 

“Y-Yeah, you know, it’s just….it’s funny...you wonder what that uh, Dr. Nakayama would think now, huh? Like, do you think he had this in mind for Jack?”

Rhys chuckled hoarsely as Vaughn swirled the soup around with the spoon, getting a big chunk of chicken and noodle and letting Rhys slip it into his mouth with minor assistance.

“...Wait a second.  _ Wait _ .” Vaughn sets down the soup, his eyes suddenly wide. “ _ Nakayama _ .”

“What about him?” Jack asks irritably, but the serious look in the little guy’s face pulls his notice. “Muscles?”

“Nakayama, he...he  _ made _ you, right? And he was...he was  _ obsessed _ with you. With keeping you alive.”

“Yeah. Just about the only good thing he’s ever done…”

“Right, okay. But what if…” Vaughn leaned in closer to Rhys. The omega frowned, eyebrows fluttering in confusion as his friend stared through his skull.

“What if  _ what _ ? Out with it, kiddo, else I’m gonna make you wait until the commercial break.”

“What if Nakayama wanted to make sure nothing could happen to you? What if he put in some….some kind of failsafe.”

Jack’s eyes widened. 

“If he didn’t want your A.I. to fall into the wrong hands….be used in some enemy tech...maybe he programmed a killswitch into you?”

Rhys stared, as stunned as Jack was. He turned away from Vaughn, looking up at the A.I. with an open mouth.

“....Jack?”

The A.I.’s clench fist came crashing down through the couch arm so hard it nearly caught fire.

“That  _ son of a bitch! _ ”

* * *

Of course it had been Nakayama all along.

Jack took back every kind word he’d ever said about the dead scientist, not that there had been many in the first place. Intentional or not, the fact that the doctor had essentially poisoned his omega’s brain had the A.I. writhing in a seething ball of anger. 

Now that they had a lead of what to look for Jack had sent out a fresh team of medics to practically ransack the old doctor’s already dilapidated office, left to rot after his death. The encrypted files about the A.I. project took a couple of days to crack despite Jack’s apparently not-so-universal clearance. 

Then it took a few  _ more _ days to decipher Nakayama’s very much thrown-together notes and code- a mess as the doctor  _ clearly _ wasn’t an experienced programmer. A part of Jack was  _ appalled _ that his A.I. even worked as well as it was with what he looked over himself, not that he shared those feelings with anyone.  

It all pissed the CEO off even further until they managed to hack into the necessary information on just  _ what _ was wreaking havoc on Rhys. 

Thankfully, Jack was  _ finally _ met with some good news. Rhys was still fragile, shaking with the effects of medication but even he brightened when the entire medical team reported that not only had they determined what had  _ caused _ the illness in the first place, but also hypothesized a means to halt it for good. 

“Dr. Nakayama apparently did not want for you to fall into enemy hands, sir,” the beta, sprightly with the knowledge that she would  _ not _ be killed for her news, reported. “He programmed you so that any attempts to upload your A.I. to a non-Hyperion system would unleash a virus that would corrupt and cripple it to make recovery easier.”

“But Rhysie’s Hyperion-made, right?” Jack raised his eyebrow from his perch on Rhys’ palm. The young omega cleared his throat, gaining some confidence to speak up.

“U-Uh, not exactly. I mean, the basic framework and infrastructure is still Hyperion but I’ve um….well, I’ve modified a lot of my programing myself over the years….upgraded with tech and software from other companies.”

Jack sputtered, befuddled.

“What? Hyperion tech not good enough for you, cupcake?”

“H-Hey! I didn’t think one of your creepy stalkers would try to kill me because of it!”

“In any case,” the beta doctor interjected lightly, drawing the men’s attention, “we theorize that if the offending parts and third-party software are removed, and Rhys is restored to the Hyperion factory setting, we can halt the virus’s attack on his system. Then work on separating and purging it completely, as needed with the information recovered from Dr. Nakayama.”

Relief flooded through Jack and gushed up through Rhys’ eyes and down his cheeks as the omega finally broke down and sobbed tears of relief. The doctor sat down on the bed next to him, wrapping the omega up in a tender hug as Jack watched, a triumphant smile spreading across the alpha’s face. 

* * *

Despite narrowing in on the problem, the medical team still warned them both of the risks of surgery and software rollbacks. Due to the nature of the virus and Rhys’ weakness, Jack could not simply store himself somewhere other than Rhys’ brain throughout the operation, but one wrong move could cause the A.I. to become erased or corrupted. Even with the danger, however, Jack had insisted they press forward if they felt it was the best solution to defeating this virus for good and getting Rhys on the road to a quick recovery.

Both procedures thankfully, passed without incident. Jack wakes up as he’s always woken up, with Rhys at his side. This time, it takes awhile for the omega to awaken and despite the steady, positive readings of the monitors he frets up until the moment Rhys’ eyes flutter open from beneath the swath of head bandages.

“So...guess it was really my fault all along.”

Rhys chuckled weakly as he turned his head to the side. 

“H...how were you supposed to know...Jack?”

“I know everything. Shut up.” The A.I. mumbled

“You’re all Hyperion now. Sorry ‘bout that, kiddo. We’ll try to rewrite Nakayanno’s program so you can mod your own tech again sometimes soon.”

“...Honestly, being alive in exchange for a couple of my mods is...not a bad trade.”

“Yeah,” Jack whispered, turning on his side to look at the gentle smile on Rhys’ lips. 

“It’s really not.”

* * *

Even with wealth like Jack’s, a team of physical therapists, and yards of regenerated nerve tissue, it took Rhys awhile to recover. Stiffness slowly gave way to numbness, which gave way to pins and needles that still now keep the omega shuddering as he stumbles and sinks with relief into their couch. Nothing in the world can tear away the damage done.

But despite it all, Rhys is still  _ there _ . He’s there, smiling and standing strong months later as the R&D team finally transfers him from Rhys’ brain and into the large, blinking machine hooked up to Jack’s clone body.

And when Jack opens his eyes— _ his _ eyes, their flesh lids like a shroud lifted—Rhys is there, presence as constant and unwavering as Jack’s own as he leans down and kisses Jack’s soft, new lips.

“Welcome back, handsome.”


	15. From Scratch

Smelling—actual, bonafide, no-kidding  _ smelling _ —is something both wondrous and fearful. 

Jack almost can’t handle it at first, even in the mostly sterile wing of R&D his clone body had been kept in. He can smell cleaning fluid, starchy clothes, and very distantly the smell of creature blood and slime through the thick metal walls. 

But Rhys welcomes him when he needs to burrow his face into the omega’s chest and simply  _ breath _ , to distract himself with the singularity of Rhys’ comforting odor, and it makes it more bearable as he slowly rises to his feet. 

Standing, also, is something wondrous and fearful and slightly  _ embarrassing _ because he nearly loses his balance a couple of times as Rhys leads him through the department. Jack is thankful for fast travel, not wanting to hobble through Helios like a wounded skag. 

He sleeps the moment he gets home and when he wakes up Rhys has made the biggest stack of waffles Jack had ever laid his eyes on and maybe it’s just the fact that Jack hasn’t actually eaten anything kinda-sorta in a year but technically in  _ forever _ but it tastes so amazing and it makes him feel  _ full _ and  _ satisfied _ and it’s so much that he ends up falling asleep  _ again _ in the bundle of soft blankets on his bed that he just can’t get enough of.

When he wakes up, a different sort of hunger gnaws at his belly. 

Rhys’ omega scent is strong besides him, and as he stirs the young man shifts, leaning over him and capturing his lips in a kiss. Jack’s broad hands grasp the sides of Rhys’ face, his fingertips pressing into the omega’s smooth cheekbones as Rhys presses his tongue into Jack’s mouth, earning a surprised moan from the alpha. Jack chases Rhys’ lips as the omega pulls back, soft laughter sucked into Jack’s mouth as Rhys carefully pushes the alpha back down, his eyelids heavy with lust. 

“I know you’re eager, handsome, but let me….get ready first. This is a big deal after all.” Rhys kisses him lightly, a mere taste of what’s to come, before he pops off to the bathroom, leaving Jack to stare with fervent pride at the  _ huge _ bulge tenting in his pants. Both he—and probably Rhys—were thrilled that the scientist’s had brought their A-game on that one. 

The door to the bathroom opens just as Jack wonders if he should give chase to his omega, revealing long slender legs and pretty tattoos torso enrobed in golden silk and fluffy white bows. Rhys looks ripped right from one of Jack’s wet dreams and considering they’d shared brains for the last couple of months it’s not something the alpha can necessarily rule out. His jaw drops, eyes roving up over Rhys’ body as the omega sways closer.

“Damn….wasn’t expecting this but you  _ really _ went all out, didn’t ya?” Jack whispers as Rhys again straddles him, fitting both their bulging crotches together. 

“It’s a special occasion,” Rhys smiles softly, “so I thought I might put on something you like…”

“How  _ did  _ you know I liked yellow, pumpkin?”

Rhys snickered.

“Oh, I don’t know, that’s something you  _ reaaally _ keep under wraps.”

Jack’s smirk is quickly kissed off his lips, warmth blossoming in his stomach as Rhy presses their bodies even closer together. A host of new sensations grazes Jack’s body, keyed into his skin as Rhys’ kisses away from his lips, trailing down his neck. The omega’s mouth just barely brushes against the tingly tissue around the port behind his ear, before sucking against the side of Jack’s pulsing neck. 

It feels so good to touch flesh, to  _ be _ flesh. Jack always thought being in a body again would be welcome, but he could have never predicted how  _ transcendent _ it would feel. 

It’s almost  _ too _ much _.  _

“Rhys…. _ kiddo _ , I—”

“It’s okay,” Rhys soothes, his hands stroking over Jack’s cheeks, “there’s no shame if you need to like...slow down...or even stop.”

Jack groans. 

“Okay, okay! We don’t have to stop. But don’t push yourself.”

“C...Could say the same to you….” Jack realizes he is pressing probably way too hard into Rhys’ ribs, “your therapist say it’s okay for you to do this?”

“It’s  _ sex _ , Jack— _ ah _ —not running a marathon.” Rhys squirms, a giddy flutter running through his chest. Jack can see the kid’s cock pressing out against his tight golden undies, a patch of wet fabric glistening near the waistband. 

As much as he loves Rhys in that lingerie, he has a fevered drive to see his omega naked, so his hands rip the underwear down to Rhys’ knees and off his ankles before flinging it aside to catch on the bedpost. Rhys gasps at the throw for a moment before Jack is upon him, rough but careful as he lays the omega back down against the bed and presses their bodies close together. 

“Rhys…” Jack breathes, “pumpkin, I...I  _ need _ you...I need you so frikkin’ bad...I feel...I feel  _ so much _ …”

“You’re...you sound like an omega,” Rhys chuckles softly through his panting.

“N...Nothing wrong with sounding like an omega…”

“H-Hah, hold up, think I’m…. _ mmm _ , I’m gonna need that in writing…” Rhys groans as Jack rubs their cocks together. “S-Show it….to all the alphas in this place…”

Jack chuffs, nuzzling against Rhys’ lips in between kisses. 

“Maybe just….shack ‘em up inside an omega brain….seems to do the trick.”

Jack’s kisses are soft but hungry, mouth wavering between the teething nip of a pup and the grateful lick of a loyal dog as he grinds his body against Rhys’, everything warm and supple for what they both know is to come. 

Jack’s almost  _ afraid _ of being inside of Rhys when he starts to press the blessedly thick head of his cock into the omega because  _ crap _ , he’s tight, even with the slick easing the way. For a second, Jack’s mouth goes completely dry and he’s not sure if he can do this. Self doubt dogs at his fresh brain filled with old memories teasing about his age and stamina and Rhys is so sweet and so needy underneath him with his cheeks pink and nipples standing up like runway lights on a field of creamy skin and tats like crop circles and Jack just wants to do right by the kid after all this time, to make sleeping with Handsome Jack really, really god-damn worthwhile.  

But then Rhys moans, breathy and high and so frikkin’ real and unlike any audio recording of any porno worth it’s salt and Jack is pounding into him, chasing more and more of those moans, wanting them to kiss his ears like the gentle lips he claims over and over again as he thrusts in and out of his omega. 

When he comes it’s like a chorus of cymbals crashing, like a thunderous wave upon the shore, like a star exploding into space and galactic angels singing its destruction and yet none of those really come close to the pleasure that rockets through his virgin body. His loins burn with healthy fire as it explodes outwards, his knot swelling up with fresh blood as he seals himself inside of Rhys with a delicious conviction.

Jack finally takes a moment to breath, filling his nostrils with Rhys’ scent. It fills his brain, fills every inch of his body as if he’s still an insubstantial projection in need of something solid to keep him weighted. His new body is hollow, he needs to fill it with new things. New smells, new sights, new memories. Everything new, as fresh as the breath of warm air simmering in his throat as he partakes deeply of Rhys’ scent. 

Jack hugs him close, wanting more as the omega practically marinates in the sweet smell of orgasm. His body twitches in Jack’s embrace, their rising chests fighting against one another as Jack empties his release into the Rhys’ body, his knot thankfully holding firm inside of him as he floods him with inaugural seed. 

Jack’s hands caress his omega’s front, pleased to find Rhys’ belly is full, slightly rounded with the alpha’s cum. Something of his, something undeniably  _ physical _ inside of Rhys.

They lie intertwined together long after, Rhys resting calm against his chest in the softest recesses of sleep. Jack strokes down his back, one arm tucked behind his head as he looks out his massive window and into the innumerable expanse of space. 

Jack smirks as his eyes glance over each little twinkling dot, each planet still out there, still waiting to be conquered and taken into his domain. Endless possibilities, stretched out all around him and into infinity. 

He lets his eyes fall shut, mind aflutter with the dreams of a world now ripe and open for the taking. 

With a hot new body, millions of dollars, and a sexy, cunning omega by his side, how can he lose?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all so much for reading this fic. And special thanks again to my beta and artists for contributing their time to make it really something wonderful. And thank you, readers, for reading this far. :)


End file.
